Cheap Laughs

Laughter and jokes and play are undervalued in our serious adult world.

We think of all of these as entertainment, just a way to escape the stress and burdens of a threatening world which weighs us down.

Do you ever feel like you’re carrying more than you [...]]]>

Cheap Laughs

Laughter and jokes and play are undervalued in our serious adult world.

We think of all of these as entertainment, just a way to escape the stress and burdens of a threatening world which weighs us down.

Do you ever feel like you’re carrying more than you can bear?
Laughter picks up those burdens, and takes them away from us, if only for a moment.

A break from our worries is great.
But laughter is much more than an escape.

Laughter can heal.

Studies show that laughter has a positive effect on our health, while negative moods are not good for us.

Sometimes, laughter is a wonderful expression of joy and happiness.
To me, nothing is more beautiful than a heartfelt smile.

I think that our spirit shines through those moments, clear and bright.

But, there are times and places where laughter and humor are not welcome at all.
Laugh during a funeral, a serious speech, or during a solemn religious service, and see what reaction you get!

You’ll be called disrespectful or strange (at best).

What is this struggle between laughter and serious events?
How did laughter become the enemy of solemn, important occasions?

I think it’s because laughter and its extreme cousin, cynicism, are often used to attack and destroy.

We often laugh at things that we find ridiculous or foolish, even when other people find those same things important or sacred.

Laughter can shatter an important moment, and turn it to dust.

Tragically, we sometimes use laughter to pretend that something truly important to us is ridiculous or foolish.

It’s our way of hiding from questions within us that need answers, or hiding from actions that we must do.

The Jester and the Trickster
In medieval times, it was common for kings to have a court jester. The jester was the one person who could joke about almost anything and get away with it.

He was there to entertain the king.

Sometimes his humor would be cruel and destructive to those who he joked about.
But often, he was there to raise important questions.

His job was to trick people into questioning the things that they otherwise would never question.

In the stories and mythology of many cultures there is the character of the trickster.
Sometimes this character is evil, and he seems to exist to bring out the worst in people, and lead them to harm themselves and others.

At other times, this character is a troublemaker, who doesn’t let people continue undisturbed in their everyday lives. He forces them to see the foolishness and weakness in themselves.

If the victims of his tricks don’t do anything with that knowledge, then the trickster is just an annoying character.
But if he succeeds in waking them up, he has performed an incredible service to them.

Playing With Fire

Laughter is like fire or any powerful tool.
It can be used to wake us up, to move us along the path of personal growth, to bring us healing and joy, or to destroy.

I’ve spoken before (in Caution: Shape Shifters at Play and Why are we afraid to Play? ) about the power of play that enables us to try out other ways of thinking and acting.

You are the ultimate possibility machine.

Did you ever think about how many different lives might be possible for a single person?

Even you.

Sure, you pretend that everything must be exactly as it is, but that’s the voice of fear speaking. We’re caught in a whirlwind of fear — fear of change, fear of facing a world where anything can happen.

We all find ourselves stuck, caught in a world made small by our habits and mindless rules.

Fortunately, there are certain forces in our lives that have the power to suspend our habits and our rules, to suspend the certainty that life can only be just as it is.

Laughter and play are two such forces.
They are like a reset button which shuts off all the little programs and voices within us that are running our lives.

Do you feel the lightness and the freedom that comes with play and positive laughter?

It’s not that we’ve escaped responsibility.
We’ve entered an abundant, open space where possibility is real, free of our limiting beliefs.

So, how will you use the power of laughter and play?

You can use those forces against others to try to hurt them, to leave them temporarily or permanently without the comfort of their habits and beliefs.

You can use those forces to help others.

Better yet, begin with yourself.
Use laughter, play, and imagination to open up a space of possibility in your life.

Will you get nervous without your habits of thought, feeling, and action to tell you who to be and what to do?

Yes.

The emptiness and fear may lead you to jump back into the familiar, or fill the moments with a simple game that doesn’t question your life.

But you have another choice.
You could play at being someone else for a few moments.

Or, perhaps, you could play at being someone else for the rest of your life.

Leading a Double Life Imagine that there is a door in your apartment or house.

Each day you step through that door and visit a distant and strange world for a few hours. In that world you have a different name and face and body. You live, work, earn money, [...]]]> Leading a Double Life
Imagine that there is a door in your apartment or house.

Each day you step through that door and visit a distant and strange world for a few hours.
In that world you have a different name and face and body.
You live, work, earn money, face challenges, create, succeed, and grow – every single day.

And then, you return to your everyday, ordinary life.

The contrast between the two worlds is dramatic.
You can’t give up either one, and you can’t see how to bring them together.

If one person leads this double life, the two worlds may remain forever separate
But what if 100’s of millions of people lead this double life?

Soon, they will demand that their everyday world becomes more like their magical one.

In Part 1 of this series, we spoke of virtual worlds on the Internet as the new frontier.
We suggested that the 100’s of millions of people living hours of their days in these worlds would have a profound effect on our everyday world.

 
Second Life, or Escape from Reality?
Why do so many people find the virtual worlds so enticing, so enjoyable, and so meaningful?

Is it just the adrenaline rush of a world with fast action, danger, wish fulfillment, and the opportunity to express dark sides of us that are unacceptable in everyday life?

While we can’t completely discount this aspect of video games in general, and virtual worlds, in particular, this is only the surface of it.

It’s much the same as the way pornography was a driving force in the adoption of video, dial-up bulletin boards, newsgroups, and even the Internet.

The opportunity to express and pursue certain behaviors dominates some new technologies, at least for a while. But we would be foolish to conclude that those behaviors are the measure of those technologies.

 
The Meaning of Fun and Games
Exodus to the Virtual Worlds, by Edward Castronova, discusses life in the virtual worlds in great detail. Castronova identifies a number of profound benefits that visitors find in these virtual worlds:

• Equal beginnings. Each player starts with nothing, and succeeds through her own efforts.
• Players proceed at their own pace, but when they finally succeed, they gain new skills and resources, and they join a community of players at that level.
• Exceptional players find recognition within the community of their peers who truly understand and appreciate their efforts.
• The worlds provide challenges which are appropriate to the skill level of the player
• There are clear measures of success and failure.
• The benefits of success are available without long delays.
• Failures do not permanently stop you. There is always the opportunity to start again.
• There is clarity in the virtual worlds between good and evil, and the world calls upon individuals to make choices.
• Activities are performed alone, and in groups, and typically benefit you and others.
• The most successful virtual worlds have clear rules, which are as simple as possible.

The virtual worlds, like our lives, are games — environments with rules, where the outcome is not certain.

But unlike many people’s experience of their everyday lives, these games are designed to be satisfying, meaningful, and fun.

One of Castronova’s most profound observations is that people quickly lose interest in games/worlds that provide no challenge, or challenges that are too easy or too hard for the current skill level of the player.

I would add a few points:

• We crave the opportunity to remake ourselves, to break out of our current boundaries and find a way to explore the possibility that we know is waiting for us.
• While we want to break out of our old patterns and rules, we don’t want a world without order.
• We want fair, consistent rules that shape a predictable world, but leave us plenty of freedom to change.
• We want a world with stable civilization, and frontiers. We can then choose how much of our time to spend in the more civilized areas, and how much of our time to spend in the more wild areas. The frontiers provide unique challenges and opportunities to grow.

 
The Death and Rebirth of Civilization
Civilizations that lose their frontiers become old and frightened of change, and ultimately collapse and die.
Sometimes civilizations with frontiers still decay. This often happens when the frontiers are too far away from everyday life, and have little influence on the old world.

The virtual worlds are always close by. They have an ever-growing population that will bring their lessons of possibility and meaning back to the old world.

As the Internet began and developed, we saw a glimpse of frontiers in the distance.
The virtual worlds will continue this process, as they restore ever-growing, ever changing frontiers to us.

 
**Resources for further exploration:
Exodus to the Virtual Worlds
I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life
The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds (Ex Machina: Law, Technology, and Society)

Terra Nova Blog on Virtual Worlds
Virtual Worlds News
Standford University Virtual Worlds Group
MIT Webcast on Virtual Worlds

There are laws and regulations that control the content of television, movies, video games, and to a lesser extent, the [...]]]> The Free Exchange of Ideas vs. Censorship
Do you feel angry or even afraid when you hear that the government or other organizations are trying to control the content of your entertainment and your information?

There are laws and regulations that control the content of television, movies, video games, and to a lesser extent, the Internet. The rules have gotten more lenient over time, but they’re still there.

Why is the government trying to control the content of the Internet?

Many people are concerned that some of the content on the Internet exerts a bad influence on our children, and even on society in general.

Still other people are frightened by the sheer power of the Internet, and the unknown ways in which it may influence our future.

I don’t deny that the Internet has a powerful influence over us.

You might discount that influence, saying that everything and everyone we meet has an influence on us.

That’s true.

Still, the Internet is unique for it’s size, speed, and easy access to people everywhere. This gives the Internet the power to connect us to every idea and influence that exists.
And the Internet provides virtual communities where people with common interests “live” together.

Hopefully you and I make choices about which influences we let into our heads and hearts and homes.
There are plenty of things that I don’t want to see, or let my children see.

It’s not ridiculous to try and limit our exposure to hatred, violence, child pornography, terrorism, etc.

But it’s troubling to give the government the power to control what we see and hear.

Many people would like to live in a world without restrictions, not trusting government to always act in our best interests.

But what happens when violence or some other undesirable influence becomes so wide spread that we can no longer avoid it, and we can no longer keep it away from our children?

Here we are.

You can drastically limit these influences, if you get rid of television and movies.
But outside of tightly knit religious communities, most people aren’t willing to go that far.

And even with movies and TV out of the picture, the Internet, and its many communities remain.

The Internet is the most extraordinary, powerful tool, and like virtually any tool it can be used for good or evil. It brings us together, and it makes it easy to encounter any idea imaginable.

Virtual Worlds: The Final Frontier
But there is something new that has taken shape on the Internet, which may ultimately dwarf the importance of the Internet’s communities: Virtual Worlds.

Many people will dismiss these as nothing more than multi-player video games. We’ve had complex games for years, haven’t we?

The millions of people networking, sharing information, and living together through the Internet have irrevocably changed society, partly by making the Internet an integral part of our daily activities, and partly by changing our expectations of relationships, information, and commerce in a way that has carried over into brick and mortar parts of the economy.

So too the millions of people spending hours in virtual worlds will change the culture outside of the games, partly by making it commonplace for people to spend hours in virtual worlds, living other lives, and partly by changing the expectations that those players will have of their non-virtual worlds.

The numbers of people spending hours in these games is growing quickly.
Soon there will be hundreds of millions of people spending time in these worlds.

These worlds have culture, economies, and meaning.
The people who play these games find meaning in their identities and lives within the game, often more meaning than in their everyday lives.

Does it sound foolish or crazy to you?
The players in these worlds think about their time in the games as just living there.

Virtual worlds on the Internet enable us to lead simulated lives that we care about. This kind of experience has immeasurably more power to influence us than our relationships within the existing virtual communities, or the presentation of the same ideas in any other format.

(In Part II, we’ll explore Exodus to the Virtual World by Edward Castronova, which discusses the way that virtual worlds are structured, how the players experience these worlds, and the possible influence that this will have on society.)

She had this eternally wise expression on her face (ok, she is a bit of a genius). And, like all other babies, she had [...]]]> Babies and Power
I remember when my oldest child was born.
She was, and is, like all children, a miracle, but at the moment of her birth she seemed absolutely helpless.

She had this eternally wise expression on her face (ok, she is a bit of a genius). And, like all other babies, she had no real understanding of the world around her.

But she was born knowing how get our attention, and get the care that she needed to survive.

Was she powerless?
She was totally incapable of taking care of herself, but she could get others to do what she needed. That’s definitely a kind of power.

Later on, when she grew aware of herself, she took great pleasure in crawling, and walking, and talking, and learning.

We love to learn and change and grow and act. It makes us feel powerful.
And our power is amplified by working together with others who can do for us things that we cannot do for ourselves.

Powerless
Fast forward 10, 20, 30 years, and many of us are tired. We’ve lost much of that natural sense of personal power, that excitement that comes from feeling our potential, and acting on it.

What went wrong?
Can you remember who first told you that what you do doesn’t count for much?
Was it a parent, a friend, an enemy, a teacher, a boss?

Or did you apply some standard that others gave you, and find yourself lacking?
Did you convince yourself that you’re powerless?

And why did you listen when you were told that you were powerless?
How did you come to believe that you don’t have any power over the way that your life unfolds?

Did someone make you a victim? Or did you give the world permission to convince you that you’re a victim? Did you unknowingly give your power away?

You may feel that you must live your life, tossed back and forth by forces that surround you, forces that seem overwhelming and unfathomable.

But who told you to feel this way?
Who convinced you that it has to be this way?

How did you come to feel that your greatest hope for power comes through getting others to do things for you, as though nothing you can do counts?

When we feel powerless, we alternate between feeling that we’re stuck, out of control, and searching desperately for a way to find power.

But what kind of power are we looking for?
We have so many strange ideas about power, and where it comes from.

Force
Do you look at power as a way to force or bribe others to do what you want?
Do you want the power that comes when people pay attention to you, and want to please you?

Whether it’s physical strength, a position of authority, money, or some trick or technique to convince people to do what you want, it’s all about control of others.

These kinds of power are about control of the world outside of you.
However sophisticated the desires are that we want fulfilled, we want the power of the baby to cry out, and let someone else do it for us.

Talent
Then, there is power that comes from natural talents, whether of the mind, or body, or heart. This is power that lies within you.
These are talents that give you power to shape your world.
But having talent is not the same as knowing what to do with it, or using it, or feeling ourselves powerful because of it.

People often find their talents, but wait for others to tell them how to use those talents, whether they matter, or what they mean.

When you do this, you give others permission to control you. You give away a chance at real power.

You can search for power in a thousand external ways, and see those powers rise and fall, see them pushed aside by forces that sweep them away in a moment.

You can take your own internal sources of power, and let others reshape them until they only exist outside of you, and can be easily pushed aside.

Dreams
You can dream.

You can believe in yourself, and walk with great feeling toward the future, a future that you shape with your dreams and your actions.

You don’t need to ask anyone else’s permission to dream.

And your dreams can find new worlds where no one has been before.
What power can compare with that?

But like other great sources of personal power, if we’re not careful, we can give this power away.
We may give others permission to shape our dreams.
We may convince ourselves that our dreams mean nothing, and we have to swallow the dreams that others give us, and pretend that they are our own.

Take a few new steps with me.
Let us learn together to walk in new worlds.
Let us learn together to speak in a new language.
Let us find again the unique abilities in each of us that give us our own dreams.
Let us share what is best in us with others, to inspire them to find their own greatness.

And let us live in a world where everyone is powerful, without looking for others to serve them.

This is an age where people are afraid to dream.

You don’t believe me. We have too many cable channels to count. We have movies with incredible special effects, computer games that grow more elaborate all the time, and multiplayer games and virtual worlds on the internet.

And we [...]]]> Love to Dream, Hate to Dream

This is an age where people are afraid to dream.

You don’t believe me.
We have too many cable channels to count.
We have movies with incredible special effects, computer games that grow more elaborate all the time, and multiplayer games and virtual worlds on the internet.

And we have an unending supply of novels that are released, month after month, most in print, but some as e-books.

With all of this, our heads are full of dreams.

In fact, many people would rather watch television, go on the internet, or play a computer game, than exercise, play sports, or go out and spend time with people.
There’s no question, that sometimes, we love to dream, and need to dream, like we need air, water, food, and love.

We’re not afraid to dream someone else’s dreams.
And usually, we’re not afraid of the dreams we have in bed, when asleep.
Those dreams seem comfortably distant, so they don’t scare us.
They don’t demand anything of us.

But, what if we started to dream our own dreams?
You and I might change beyond all recognition.
And we imagine that our familiar, somewhat predictable world would crumble.
And how could we ever be safe, then?

Maybe you do let yourself dream about other ways of being, and having, and doing, but do you let yourself dream big dreams?

Or do you dream of small changes that wouldn’t matter much to you or anyone else?

As children we dream big dreams.
And then we find obstacles in the way.
We get tired. We get discouraged. We get hurt.
And we’re told that our dreams are unrealistic.
Or that we’re not worthy, fit, or able to reach such a dream.

What would this world be like if your family, friends, and society encouraged you to dream great dreams?
What would this world be like if they dared you to dream dreams that no one had ever dreamed before.

When I hear these words, my heart beats faster.
I see high mountains, and wide oceans, and other images of vast possibility.
And still, those natural wonders pale before the great things that we would all accomplish together in such an extraordinary world.

What would you or I be like in such a world?

Never Too Late
“It’s never too late to be the person you could have been.” (George Elliot)

In Do You Hate Selling, I speak of five powerful ways that can be used or abused to influence people.

The first way is to encourage other people’s dreams.

If we’re interested in personal development, and we want to unlock all the greatness that’s hidden inside of us, we have to get smart about the ways that we influence ourselves.

It may sound a little weird to talk about influencing yourself, sort of like strange people who refer to themselves by name, instead of saying “I”.

But there are conflicting parts of us with different interests, and you’ve got to find a way to motivate yourself to develop new habits of thought and feeling, in order to become a different person.

I’ve got to get in the habit of encouraging my dreams. I’ve got to encourage myself to dream big, and take action on those dreams to bring them to life.

Sure, it would be a big help if other people would encourage my dreams, and I hope you find friends who care about your dreams.

But at the beginning, you need to be the one to encourage your own dreams, and one of the best ways to build a new mental habit is to practice it on others.

If you want to encourage your dreams, encourage the dreams of those around you.

Do you encourage the dreams of your family, friends, and co-workers?
Do you even know what their dreams are?

If you want to have really powerful relationships with people, get to know their dreams, and care about their dreams.

And before long, you’ll believe that your own big dreams will come true.
And your friends will be telling you the same thing.

Did you ever hear that from a parent or a teacher?

Maybe you ignored it and got into trouble. Or, more likely, you eventually listened, and stopped.

But that wasn’t the end of your desire to play.

You probably still like to play in some way. Although you probably don’t [...]]]> Childhood’s End?
“Stop fooling around!”

Did you ever hear that from a parent or a teacher?

Maybe you ignored it and got into trouble.
Or, more likely, you eventually listened, and stopped.

But that wasn’t the end of your desire to play.

You probably still like to play in some way.
Although you probably don’t call it play, except when you play sports or cards.

It’s recreation, exercise, vacation, relaxing, socializing, a night out, or meeting people.
We’re sensible adults now, and we need an excuse to enjoy ourselves, right?

Most people are uncomfortable with the idea of play.
That’s too immature. I’m too old and sensible, and serious for that.

I know a lot about being serious.
I could have invented the word if someone else hadn’t already done it.

It seems like I received a double portion of serious at birth.
I was quiet, and thoughtful, and at 10 years old, I was already asking questions about the meaning of life.

Ok. Not all the time.

Even though I have this sometimes oppressive, serious side, I’ve always loved to play.
There. I used the four-letter-word.
(Did anyone hear me?)

There was a while in my life when the playful part of me went underground, but it’s come back.

What do I mean when I use the word play?

I mean that extraordinary human ability to shake up this stiff, settled, and fixed world, and enter a dimension where anything is possible, and the world becomes magical again.

As it was, when we were children.
As it still is, if we let possibility come out and play with us.

Playful and Serious
What do you think of when someone says, “Get serious”?
Some people think of becoming completely focused on our responsibilities, our duties, and our obligations.
It’s wonderful to be focused on the parts of our lives which bring us meaning, and that’s the good side of being serious – a focus on what’s important to us.

But too often (most of the time, I think), we apply a focused, frozen attitude to keep doing what we’re already doing. Just keep going, and don’t think about it.
That’s the kind of seriousness that is dangerous to our personal development.

If we can’t change, and can’t grow, life is over.

I think that we need to combine a focus on what’s most meaningful to us right now, with a playful attitude that combines joy, gratitude, love, exploration, and strength.

Fear and Strength
Can we be playful, when there are bills to pay, tragedies, death, and suffering?

Yes, it’s a challenge.
But facing up to the demands of life, and its sorrows, and accepting a certain measure of responsibility, is not a death sentence for play.

Because play, in it’s most profound sense, is how we break the boundaries of the way things are and must be, and dream of a new me, new worlds, and new ways of living.

It’s true that the weight of life’s burdens can push us to hide behind the mask of seriousness.

But there’s a more profound reason, I think, that we move away from play as we age.
We’re disappointed in ourselves.

We’re not satisfied with what we’ve achieved.
We’re not happy with some of the compromises that we’ve made.
We’re not happy with the ways that we’ve betrayed our own principles, and abandoned our own dreams.

And play, in its most profound sense, says that I can change who I am.
I can be different if I really want to.
Possibility is not just something for a stage, or for the world outside of me.
Possibility is all about who I can become.

But that’s frightening.
To be able to change, to be able to explore all the possibility that’s hiding in me, I have to be willing to see the complete truth about what I’ve done with my life, without sugar coating it.

How many of us have the strength and the courage to look for, and fight for, the complete truth about ourselves?

Why is that so important?
Because the possibilities that each of us has, the new me that I can become, may be waiting in some corner of myself that I’ve been too frightened to approach.

If we have the courage to see the truth about ourselves, if no corner of ourselves is too frightening to explore, then a world of possibility opens up.

Turn up the volume. That’s our answer to every need.

Why are we addicted to extremes?

Look around. Our senses are assaulted daily by a mountain of sensations, and our minds are overloaded with information.

And it’s not simply the quantity of sensations, or the speed with which we encounter them. They’re [...]]]> Addicted to Extremes

Turn up the volume.
That’s our answer to every need.

Why are we addicted to extremes?

Look around.
Our senses are assaulted daily by a mountain of sensations, and our minds are overloaded with information.

And it’s not simply the quantity of sensations, or the speed with which we encounter them.
They’re competing for our attention.

In the midst of this chaos, our minds respond with the simplest solution.
Dull the senses, dull the feelings, ignore the information.

And why not?
So much of what surrounds us is trivial, fake, or irrelevant.

Here’s the problem.
Life’s simple, wonderful experiences are also tuned out.

When we ignore the noise, we start to ignore what’s precious and valuable around us.
We ignore information that is important to us.
We ignore the people who are important to us.
We don’t feel.

Sure, we know that something is wrong.
And we try to compensate.
We search for powerful experiences that will break through our filters and dullness.
We want to feel alive again.

If real life can’t reach us, then we’ll shock ourselves awake.

Music has to be louder than a jackhammer.
News, drama, books, and movies can’t focus on everyday feelings and events.
They have to focus on the extreme, and sometimes, the twisted.
And we can’t enjoy anything unless it’s new.

Our friends, spouses, children, jobs, possessions aren’t good enough.
They’re just too familiar.

Holding On
There’s no question that we’re subjected to a mass of sensation and information that would have been unthinkable a century ago.

Some people say, that human beings can’t handle so much information.
I don’t believe it.

We’re far more capable and adaptable than we care to admit.
But, we might have to change our attitudes to keep up with our busy environment.

On the surface, at least, our world is a world of things.
And we like to have things, and control things.

There is a certain satisfaction in collecting stuff.
It makes us feel good.
It makes us feel secure and important.

So we get use to holding on.
When we’re being buried in sensations and information, and we try to hold on to all of it, what’s going to happen?

Well, what would happen if you never threw out anything (including garbage and junk snail mail)?
Before long, your house would become unfit to live in.

Your mind isn’t that different.
Sometimes we face the world with a frantic attitude, as thought we might be facing our last thought, emotion, sensation, or bit of information.

If you try to hold on frantically to every thought, emotion, and sensation that passes by, you won’t be able to think or live.

And you won’t have enough attention to deal with the next sensation.
Your brain helps out, and dulls your sensitivity, and reduces the input.

Sensitive, not Sensational
There’s an alternative.
Instead of being dull, and looking for the sensational, we cultivate sensitivity.
We look at all the wonderful details of the good moments. We find the intensity in life’s simple moments, and simple pleasures.

One second.
If we focus on being more sensitive, we’re going to drown in information.

Not necessarily.
Not if you selectively pay attention to what interests you, what’s important to you, what’s wonderful around you.

And remember it all, if you want.
Remembering it is not the same as holding on to it.

Enjoy the experience, but when it’s done, let it go.

The color will come back into what you see.
The beautiful feelings and thoughts will come back into your relationships, as well as other areas of your life.

And you’ll eagerly wait for the next wonderful experience that life brings you.

You may have to be thoughtful about where you put your attention.
But you know how to sort through junk snail mail, and junk e-mail, don’t you?

Isn’t the rest of life worth a little sorting, as well?

Not the frustration. There was plenty of that.

Not the endless procession of “NO” and “You can’t do that.”

Not even the tantrum demands for something in a spirit of “I’ve got to have this or I’ll die.”

No. Not that [...]]]> Forgetting the Magic

Do you remember what it was like to be a child?

Not the frustration.
There was plenty of that.

Not the endless procession of “NO” and “You can’t do that.”

Not even the tantrum demands for something in a spirit of “I’ve got to have this or I’ll die.”

No. Not that either.

And for those of us who were loved, not even that wonderful ocean of warm love that surrounded us and made us feel safe.

What else is there?

Give up?

How about dreams, wishes, and a heart that can stretch from one end of the universe to another in a moment.
That’s what it means to be a child.

Despite what people say, there’s no law that says you have to give up being a child when you become an adult.

We adults have many things that we wish for, long for, and cry for.
But not with the power that a child does.

As children, we knew that the world was magic, and full of endless possibility.
And here’s the secret.
We knew that the endless possibility was not only outside of us, but inside of us, too.

Searching for Magic

We’re all searching, desperate to find the magic again. We look for the perfect thing, person, experience, or other external something that will bring back the magic.
Sometimes we think that we catch a glimpse of it for a moment, before it disappears behind a cloud.

And then there is the world of personal development, self-improvement, etc.
Call it by your favorite name.

We’re looking to add something inside of us that will bring the magic back: skill, behavior, knowledge.
And I’m not knocking personal development.
There are so many wonderful ways that we can enrich ourselves.

But those ways can’t bring back the magic. The magic is something already inside of you, that’s waiting to return.

Without it, a sonnet will be hollow.
With it, making an omelet or tying a child’s shoe will be indescribable.

Maybe we just need a little help to believe in the magic again.
Maybe we can find it together.

Maybe I can believe in the extraordinary possibility that lies waiting in you.
And you can believe in the magic that lies waiting to burst forth from me like a fountain.

And when we find it, it won’t be someone else’s magic that you’ve borrowed, or pretended that it’s yours.

It’ll be yours alone, until you share it with the world.
And when you share it, it will grow bigger and bigger.

Creativity If you’re an artist, writer, sculptor, musician, photographer you might think of imagination as a place. A place deep inside where you search for something new. Somehow yours, and yet not yours.

In Greek Mythology, the sources of inspiration were creatures called Muses. The [...]]]> What do you think of when someone says the word “imagination”?

Creativity
If you’re an artist, writer, sculptor, musician, photographer you might think of imagination as a place.
A place deep inside where you search for something new.
Somehow yours, and yet not yours.

In Greek Mythology, the sources of inspiration were creatures called Muses.
The source of inspiration was personified as something external, because the experience of creation has a feeling of discovery, of otherness, and sometimes compulsion associated with it.

This is the use of imagination to reach deeply into a hidden place in us.
Some call it the unconscious, and imagination is its doorway.

When we create using the imagination, we reach out/in to a place in ourselves that is both distant and familiar. If we have the courage, we reach for a dark door and open it, unsure of what will come through the door.

When we walk toward that door, we often go with a question, idea, or theme that will bind and filter what we let come out of the unconscious.

Simulation
Many people look at imagination as a simulator, a machine where we can try on the future, and see how it fits.

Sometimes we use this simulator as a pleasant toy to enjoy the feelings that arise from a fantasy we imagine.

Other times, we use imagination to simulate a future that you desire with all your heart. In that case, the imagined future is far more than a fantasy to enjoy. It’s a reality that speaks to you. It calls to you.  

Many people use the power of imagination for Personal Development. (See my articles on The Law of Attraction)

Here’s another more powerful way to think of imagination as a simulator:
Imagine that there is a future you who is more accomplished, more free, more powerful, and more true to your dreams than you are.
Like a loving friend, brother, or parent, he calls to you to join him in an extraordinary future. This is not a fantasy. You are calling to yourself. Can you listen and reach out into the future?

Imagination as simulation can be used for a pleasant fantasy, or as a time machine where you listen to the call of the future. Will I be honest enough with myself to see the difference, and will I act on that knowledge?