Inspiration

              “I find it so hard to find inspiration.” I had no idea how to respond to that and for over a week now I have thought about how someone could say that. The person that said this to me lives in the first world. Here in this fairytale world we often think we have problems, we’re facing darkness, everything is hopeless, inspiration is rare. What a misjudgment! We are so spoiled that some of us have become desensitized to the beauty that surrounds us and should inspire us on a day to day basis! Look at the moon – people have walked on that!

                Sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. I am lucky enough to possess all five of these senses, although just one would provide infinite inspiration.

                When we wake up in the morning, sometimes we are fortunate enough to remember our dreams. Whether they are good or bad, we become them. For a few hours we live in a world where quite literally anything can happen. We dream up stories, colors, sounds, manifestations of our unconscious. We take on our deepest fears, and have our most intimate desires fulfilled. All of this before we even open our eyes. After this miraculous fantasy, we take our first conscious breath of the day.

                Many of us go for that cup of coffee as a ‘pick-me-up’ first thing in the morning. We get a glorious kick from a beverage that literally makes us feel like we are ready to take on the day. This beverage comes with the taste and smell of a foreign land. Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, India. It could come from anywhere depending on what you’re drinking. What a marvelous thought!

                Outside we see the sky, depending on the time and the weather it could be any number of colors. Sunrise can make the clouds look like flames falling from the heavens. It can look like beams of light slowly illuminating the darkness we dreamed throughout. It can take the form of a floral pattern bouncing from one cloud to the next. A little later and the sky can be sapphire blue or charcoal gray. It can be infinitely clear, or clouds can fill the sky. Each cloud as divergent as they are parallel, we can interpret the shapes they form.

                If we close our eyes the clouds remain abstract. We hear the birds chirp, the dogs bark, the traffic busying the streets. We smell the fresh air, the cut grass, the dew covering the ground. We feel the sunshine on our skin, we feel the rain fall, we feel the ground we walk on. Each step a different platform, cracks in the concrete texturing our journey. Our environment has character, as do our peers – we can learn from it all. Everything we see is art. Rural or urban, our landscape is picturesque. Everyday a unique vision from a common position. Book covers, book pages, photos, ads, graffiti, architecture, piercings, tattoos, language – can you find no inspiration in our world of privilege? Those buildings, those books, those lights, that art – somebody had to dream about it first.

                Each person we meet, see, or hear about is unique. We can be inspired to simulate acts of kindness or avoid acts of evil. We witness as people bring various things into this world with diverse skillsets. Others can help us discover what we have to offer. We can help others discover what they have to offer, willing or unwillingly, knowing or unknowingly. Individually, as a society, we have the power to inspire and the option to be inspired. The only way to avoid inspiration is to refuse to acknowledge it.

                The English alphabet has only 26 letters. I just used them in a combination you had never seen before to bring you this post. One glance at this page and you are inside my mind. I’m speaking to you clearly, carefully, silently inside your head, directly to you. My vision, inspired by a comment I heard over a week ago. Inspiration is abundant.