Reflections on Curiosity

 I stumbled a bit over the past month and a half as the month took a lot of energy to get through given preparation for Thanksgiving, family, holiday gift making - and a pandemic that continues to wreak havoc in the world. Looking back over the last month, I'm left with a few impressions of how I've fared adding curiosity actively back into my intentions.

I wrote in the last post: "I'd like to not worry or wonder where I am going - I can always look back later to answer that question. Living in the state of wonder is an aspiration."

And continues to be an aspiration. It is so much easier (so it seems) to hunker down and ignore the world at the moment. 

Curiosity needs to be free to burst out or simmer. It needs space to simply rest or grow. We plant curiosity and need to nurture it with freedom from labels and all the stories we have about what isn't possible. We have to plant curiosity without knowing what will sprout or grow.

I've tried to keep the lessons of Experiment 3 alive in my life - and I've tried to celebrate the small ways in which I kept asking - "What if?." Bringing curiosity into a daily practice isn't easy when one is hunkered down trying to recover from seeing too many people, new variants of a horrible virus, a parent in the hospital and an handful of other pressing concerns and anxieties.  And... there are ebbs and flows. Times of inspiration and times of reflections. Rest and Movement. Plateaus and new paths. As we head into the longest nights of the year, my energy wanes with the sunlight and the desire to pull a warm blanket around my soul and find rest is high.  

It has helped to embrace the notion that I don't need to worry about where I am going with all these odd creative projects I create. Letting my self "wonder" about the "what ifs" has been freeing and given myself the invitation to experiment.  

Table runner gift close-up