This morning I woke up reflecting on how things can change in an instant.  Certainly this is not a new concept, and it’s definitely not something I learned recently, but something I continue to learn and see over and over again in my life.  Perhaps I learned it first, and deepest when my father was killed instantly in a car accident when I was 14, though surprisingly, as deep as this memory goes, it is still a concept I forget from time to time. 

Good for me to remember that being open to what happens day to day is the best place for me to be.  My reflections began from thinking how a phone call I received about a job interview next week impacted me when it came.  I was on a certain track and feeling like things were going in one direction, but when the call came, I realized how excited I was about the possiblity it brought, and how it expanded my thinking.  Not to say that I may not continue in the direction I was heading if the interview doesn’t lead to this job, but what’s important here is the concept of remaining open to what happens.  In fact, more things happened yesterday that could take me in an entirely different direction, so my thinking was again expanded.  As a result, I am realizing, as I’ve been told more than once, that I seem to do best in life when I can stay present in today, not focusing too much on what I think will happen tomorrow.

So, moving on with this thought, and hearing a voice in my brain saying what I have heard in Klemmer trainings more than once, “as we are in anything, we are in everything,” I began to consider how this concept plays out in my art.  When I am creating a watercolor painting or a sketch, it is often the case that I start from a scene, picture or image that inspires me to go in a certain direction.  Then, as I begin to put that idea on paper, something often happens to take me in another direction.  If I remain stuck on the original idea, as in life, I can find myself very disappointed at the results and critical of myself for not perfectly executing what it was I was seeing in my initial vision.  However, if I am open to the change and remain open to it being a positive force, I often end up with something far better than I could have initially conceived. 

This is one of the most exciting and helpful things I have ever learned about the creative process, and it’s quite intimately connected to the how I view the creative forces at work in my life.  Day to day, may I not miss the blessings around me because I’m focused on the original way I was expecting something to be!