We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us
– Joseph Campbell
I often am inspired by quotes that I find randomly. If I am having a particularly stuck moment (for whatever reason) flipping through a book or finding a random quote website and choosing the first three quotes I come across can sometimes become a launching pad for something creative for me. I call it book surfing. There is apparently another word for it that someone told me not so long ago, but I have since forgotten. Sometimes I can find a genuine spark in book surfing, something that makes me pause to think, to be still and let everything percolate. Sometimes, concepts or phrases continue to pop up for me – which I take as a signal to pay close attention. Living the life that I hadn’t planned for is one such concept that continues to dig at me since the first time I heard it a few months ago. The quote above by Joseph Campbell that I tripped over yesterday is just another example of a long list if ‘coincidences’ as a call to trust in instinct and perhaps even intelligence and let life unfold. That is my inspiration today – that moment when I find myself standing at the top of a waterfall, watching the water rush past my feet and fall into the deep pool below me. I am standing with questions in my head, do I leap out with the water or do I turn around and go back the way I came. Leap or go, leap or go. Then I see the rainbow in the waterfall’s mist. That is a moment so perfect and ripe. It is a moment when anything and everything can happen. Isn’t that beautiful?
~
lei fraser 