Just a little something to think about: “Creators are not reactionary, they are visionary,” Richard Miller.  There are certain people who can’t walk through this world in the ordinary way.  They know something else, they see something else, more importantly they know and see in a different way.  It isn’t just knowing more, it’s knowing differently.  We all have gifts, intensely personal, unique gifts that we are meant to develop and share with the world.  We are not meant to be copies of each other, each running around living the same lives.  We are meant to create.  Creation can be (and is) inspired by something happening but it is rarely generated from that state.  When we react, it’s a response to stimuli.  We can get to a place where our responses are automatic.  Most of what we do every day is automatic—we have our routines, we think the same thoughts.  Creation doesn’t come from automated patterns we picked up to survive, it comes from breaking those patterns. The creation comes from the vision of what can be.  In this way, they are the thermostat not the thermometer like we talked about a few weeks ago.  It isn’t that things don’t happen to them, they just react differently—seeing opportunity in everything.

Recognizing potential and taking a blank canvas and turning it into something else is the mark of a visionary.  I used to fear changing something from its original state.  What if I messed it up?  What if I can’t get it back to how it was “supposed” to be?  See yesterday’s piece for reference to what happens when we want to leave things in perfection and they go unused: they lose all of their functionality and can still wither away, maybe they look pretty in their package but they have failed to do what they were meant to do and the end up discarded, unused, all of that potential lost.  A blank canvas isn’t something to be preserved as it is.  A blank canvas is something to be treasured for what it will become, for what can be seen only by us until we bring it to life.  Life is all about creation and expansion.  It is about taking the unknown, the unseen and making it seen to the world.  It’s taking the magic inside of us and sharing it, letting it create a light that can shine on and ignite the way for others.