Simple Wonders: Looking Toward 2024

 

As I review the past year or so, I know that I took an approach toward art and life of throwing everything up on the wall and seeing what would stick.  I tried many different things.  I put many different offerings into the world.  I ran from one thing to another.  It has been exhausting and honestly unfulfilling.  It's difficult to acknowledge that I'm putting a creative part of myself out into the world, and there are no takers.  I know something has to change, but it takes time to pause, evaluate, and reset.  I'm trying to do some of that right now.

In 2024, it is my intention to seek and share what I'm titling "Simple Wonders."  These are the sorts of things that are around us every single day, but in our busy-ness of running after more, more, more (you fill in the blank for whatever you are pursuing--education, relationship, money, career, fitness, a portfolio of work, connection, family, creativity--whatever your thing or things might be.). I often get the sense that new year resolutions are my attempt to run after more of those things.

This year I'm placing a moratorium on chasing the illusive stuff that I imagine will make me feel more fulfilled in the sacred depth of my heart.  I'm hitting a bit of a pause, and I'm seeking simple wonders.  What are simple wonders?  They are the things we can see when we slow down and really look.  By this I mean more than seeing with the eyes.  I mean what we see when we stop long enough and breathe deep enough to see with our hearts.  Some simple wonders I've noticed recently are:

                The color of the sky just before sunrise

                The sound of the rain rhythmically hitting the window

                The taste of just one slice of the chocolate orange lingering on the tongue

                Sorting through paints for the darkest green

                Looking at an old canvas with imagination of what it could become.

                Hearing a teenager making music with antique instruments

Change is difficult.  I imagine I will catch myself running after the other stuff more often than I care to admit.  I will forget the plan and try to fill that deep sacred place with more superficial busy-ness.  But today my intention for 2024, is to live more deliberately with more space opened up for adventure and wandering and most of all--being--being in the presence of simple wonders.