We are not meant to live in isolation. What makes us healthy and whole is the connections we form with one another. With our families. Our friends. Our colleagues and our community… The thing we need the most to feel healthy has become harder to get.
After more than 30 years in the field of social work, I know one thing to be true. We do not need to be victims to our situation. We have choices to make, each and every day about how we want to live our lives. How we choose to show up for ourselves and each other.
Practice #7 - Explore the Familiar
I have a friend who goes on a walk with her dog every morning. After her “Morning Walk with Rosie” she often posts pictures of the things she and Rosie see; a newly opened rose, a colorful wall mural, an owl sculpture perched atop a local building. Each morning she wanders the streets of the town she has lived in for years, the town she and her husband know better than I do, and snaps a picture or two of something she sees, maybe for the first time, or the tenth, and adds it to her instagram feed for all of us to enjoy. Another friend with young children creates a scavenger hunt for her kids listing items in their bedrooms, the house and the yard for them to find. Find a roly poly bug. A dirty sock. A pinecone. A book that starts with the letter G. Simple things. Household things. Things of everyday life.
One of the things I loved about having young children was the joy of seeing things through their eyes. A box becomes a playhouse. A pot becomes a drum. A penguin, a cat and a lion become players in a game of Beanie Baby baseball while a box full of wooden blocks become the stadium.
I do an exercise with my students where I hand them a paper clip and challenge them to make a list of all the ways they can think to use it. Try it. It isn’t as easy as it sounds. As we get older our vision shrinks. We abandon imagination for practicality. We fall prey to something called functional fixedness. We lose the ability to imagine different possibilities.
Try this - Use the time you have each day to explore something you see every day. As you take your morning walk, look carefully. Notice the irises blooming in your neighbor’s yard. The spray of mustard in the field across the road. The green moss growing on the old plum tree. The sunlight reflecting on an old bridge.
Look at your world with the eyes of a child. Explore the familiar.
