Finding The Things

What are the things that make me lean forward? What are the things that make me laugh? What are the things that make me excited? What do I find beautiful today that I didn’t notice yesterday? What are those things?

Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

I am wondering today about the act of noticing and remembering. And all of the things that I don’t notice and those things that I forget. I am wondering about how much of that is an active choice, even if it is also a subconscious one. I am wondering about the choices that we make that do not feel like choices, and about the times when we feel like we are out of choices, but we, in fact, have many in front of us.

I think that it is so easy to fall into the noise that surrounds us, so easy to become lost in that noise. But what if we chose, intentionally, to “lean forward”? To look for the beauty and the joy and the laughter even when it seems utterly elusive? I wonder if we –I– make this a practice, conscientiously, will it then become a habit?

I am tired of the negative and the hard and the sad and the uninspired. I am tired of the tired. I wonder if it really is as simple as choosing. Stay tuned…tomorrow I will attempt to answer the questions that Rick Rubin poses.