What would you like with that flavor?
Today, I’m offering the second installment in a series of free samples from The Wheel of Creativity: Taking Your Place in the Adventure of Life. If you haven’t read the first installment, read it here. Then read on for what comes next.
Splitting Life In A Second
So many of the great adventures of my life have arrived as the unannounced afterthought at the end of a road. At the time, most of these experiences felt like the end of the world. For all my talk of questions, living through them is not an easy path. It is not comfortable. But perhaps comfort is not all it’s cracked up to be.
In one split second, on May 7, 2009, all my plans changed. I was in the prime of my life. I was newly married to an amazing man, living in three countries, working on a meaningful project with the ideal client, and beginning to go public with my heart’s desire to sing. I had lots of plans.
On that sunny afternoon in Nice France, having just returned from England, I left my apartment to walk to the store to buy food. I crossed the street and stepped up onto the sidewalk. The curb in that spot was about four inches higher than normal. My foot did not clear it, and I fell. Arms full and unable to break my fall, I landed on my right hip. I tried to move, tried to stand; but my leg lay there beneath me like a tree trunk in the forest.
In that instant, though I pushed my mind to stay open to a better possibility, I knew what had happened. Two hours later, the young ER doctor at Saint-Roch Hospital confirmed it. I had broken my hip. It was a clean break, completely severing the head of my femur from the rest of the bone. My heart sank. Young Dr. Roux performed emergency surgery at 10:00 that night. And I began the long process of recovery. It would be four months before I would walk again, and a year before I would feel close to normal.
Resting there on the sidewalk, even as my body slipped into shock (paramedics measured my blood pressure at 80 over 50), my heart responded, “Okay, if this is what is next, let’s go.” That spirit of acceptance and willingness made the long months of recovery—which could have brought misery and angst with the pain and complications—rich with treasures, discoveries, blessings, friendship and love.
There on that sidewalk, Life took the lead; and I embarked on a new journey. Like countless others throughout my lifetime, this process showed me my place in the adventure of life, required me to respond, and invited me to collaborate in creating the outcome. The cycle I went through, like all the others, had specific stages, which I identify now as The Wheel of Creativity.
The Wheel of Creativity is a map of the creative process, each point of which I have verified by going there myself many times. In addition to showing you that map, this book retraces my steps along the way, so that you can learn to recognize the stations I have visited, in your own life. And it offers you the tips I have learned at street level, for how to get the most out of your trip.
This book is not just for artists, though artists certainly find the material useful; it is also for the rest of us. It is for the everyday people in all walks of life who are unceremoniously doing their best to make something of value with their time on the planet. This is a guidebook for the adventure of being alive.
And you???
Q: Where has life changed your plans? What outcome would you like to create in collaboration with it?
Continued next Monday…
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Keep in touch and live CREATIVE!