3 Things

Mohandas Gandhi once said, "There is more to life than increasing its speed."

In a world where we are finding new ways to multi-task and plug in, I would suggest that perhaps we take a moment (just one moment) to step back, take a deep breath, and look around.

Actually, this might be a good time to make your own personal list of the 3 important things to remember.

Have you ever seen the movie City Slickers? There's a scene that I just love: Curly (the gruff & tumble trail boss) asks Billy Crystal's character, Mitch (the City Slicker):

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
[holds up one finger]
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean shit.
Mitch: But, what is the "one thing?"
Curly: [smiles] That's what *you* have to find out.

Your 3 things are just that, yours. These are the things that you live your life for, the things that make your world beautiful & wonderful.

I would suggest that you keep this list in your pocket & when your life is getting rather hectic, take a step back, inhale deeply, find your list & read it - slowly. Once you've read it, take a look around. Is what you're doing enhancing the list? If it's not, maybe you should rethink what you are doing.

Dreaming in Lists

Image by Hugh Janus.

Last night I dreamt in lists. Each item was in the form of a colored rectangular box that I could lift from the page. I would pick a box, and as I removed it from the page it became three-dimensional - like a small memory card. I then placed the card to my temple and as if through osmosis, the dream was absorbed. Once finished, I replaced the rectangle to its rightful spot on the list where it became, once again, a two-dimensional incorporation of the page, and was checked off.

Strange dream, admittedly. Trying to piece it together, this morning I recorded it in my journal and just began writing.

In her book ArtLessons, Deborah Haynes states that, "writing helps you to understand who you are and what you believe.... You write to find out what you think." And writing will help you understand, if not the dream, then its underlying tenets.

You write to find out what you think.

Activity: Write about a Dream you've had

It doesn't have to be coherent (what dreams are?), it doesn't have to be in complete sentences, & it doesn't have to be a set length. Just write. If all you can remember is the feeling of the dream, start out with that, and go on to write about how it made you feel when you woke up... when you remembered it... right now as you look back on it... etc.

and if you find that you can't write about it, then illustrate it. Before human beings could read or write, they made marks, and those marks had associations known primarily to them. Your challenge here, is to make marks, whether written or drawn, with your dream/unconscious self in mind.

Activity: Illustrate a Dream

Illustrate the dream you had last night.

Most of us dream in incoherent images that make perfect sense at the time of the dreaming, but when we wake up we're left with a jumbled or perplexing set of images/events/feelings. Why not sit down and start drawing bits of images or events that you remember from your dreams?

Can't remember images? then draw feelings - was it a scary dream? what colors do you associate with that? What colors do you remember from your dream? Instead of images, make a page full of dream colors. label them with the associated feelings.