“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.