Have you ever noticed how powerful it can be to make a decision? How focused you become when you go from the uncertainty of multiple options to the clarity of one single choice? It can happen with decisions as simple as where to go for dinner or which art project to start on first, to as complex as what city to live in or whether to have kids or not. Once you make the decision, all the other options fall away and you can focus on enjoying your meal, or packing your bags.
A friend of mine introduced me to her comics and at first, I really didn't get it. Her drawing style is not pretty or tidy—it seems to flail across the page a bit—and her stories are heartbreaking. But after spending more time with her work, and especially after discovering her workbooks, I fell hard for her imagination and deep commitment to exploring the impact of images on people.
My love affair with walking actually started with cycling. Several years ago, I started riding my bike to work and discovered how good it felt to feel the air on my skin and to see the world going by so much more closely than it did when I was in a car. I felt more connected to my surroundings and more engaged with the process of getting between two points, rather than being solely focused on the destination.Soon I discovered that walking was like cycling, only better because it was slower and I could connect even more deeply. I could see, vividly, all the details of my path and especially how they changed from day to day. I was mesmerized.
I'm sure we can all agree on the importance of our sense of touch. Studies show that hugging someone you care about can reduce blood pressure and provide other health benefits and that babies who are not touched early in life don't develop normally. Touch helps connect us with the people we love, but it also helps us perform most of our everyday tasks. Unlike other senses, which receive information from one small area of our bodies, we can experience touch in countless different ways, over almost every part of our body, which means there is plenty of opportunity to be inspired.
With everything we do, we're either moving toward what we are interested in or away from what we are afraid of. If you've spend your life moving away from the things that scare you, you might not find the world to be a very interesting place. It might seem bland and uninspiring and you probably blame your circumstances for not offering up anything more exciting. If you look at a river and think, "So what? What's one more river?" you might need to work on cultivating your curiosity.
