One day, the magnificent multi-trunked tree in our backyard gave us a warning. We came home from our early morning shopping, and one of its massive trunks had fallen. It chose to fall quietly when no one was home so the sound it made would not frighten anyone. It hurt nothing. Not a single branch [...]
One morning, while writing my next book, I looked up and saw a man jogging down our road. Years of teaching dance kicked in, and I said to him—in my thoughts only—”Lead with your pelvis, not your head.” Laughing at myself for still having that habit of correcting movement, I thought back to when I [...]
Feeding a deer may not be a great idea. But who can resist playing peak-a-boo with a deer? Or a stare-down with a deer? Or watching deer casually walking through your yard as if they own it. The truth is. They do. Only humans are delusional about ownership. We have boundary lines marked on our [...]
It’s not what you do. It’s that you do it. “Do you want to see what this looks like after fifty years?” Del and I were at the nursery looking at a tiny orchid hanging on a piece of bark. It was barely there—just a wisp of green. “Yes,” we said without hesitation. We followed [...]
Time doesn’t change us. It just unfolds us. — Max Frisch Even though there is no time, past, present, or future, it’s how we experience life—as an unfolding, a transformation. We can either view transformation as something to fight against or embrace it. And it’s easier, in the long run, to embrace it, to think [...]
When I was in elementary school, I saw the woman who would one day become my dance teacher perform the Red Slippers. At that moment, I fell in love and knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a dancer. But one of my friends told me she taught ballet – she didn’t [...]
…we are not afraid of the dark… Every morning I sweep our hardwood floors, following the path of where we most go each day, and once a week I sweep the entire house. I didn’t use to do that daily sweeping. Then one morning, I noticed what was in the light path that shone across [...]
We’ll never complete anything, never climb a hill, never figure out something we don’t know how to do until we get started. And sometimes the thing that looks the most daunting is actually the most creative. Fearing what might happen or not happen is a shadow.
I was trying to print out something, but I didn’t hear it printing in the next room. Since it was a new program, and I had already judged it to be “behind the times,” I figured it was the program and didn’t check the printer. It took two days and multiple tries before I checked [...]
Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences. — Robert Louis Stevenson How many times have you tried to change someone, or even yourself, and failed miserably? Without knowing a single thing about what happened or what you were trying to do, I know why it probably didn’t work as well as [...]
You can dissolve any problem. Yes, this is a preposterous statement. Any problem? Yes, any problem. Eventually. But there is a price to pay. Not in money. But in paying this price, you don’t give up anything. You will get something. Because what you want is not something you hold in your hand. It’s something [...]
Not If It Was Never Lost In May, I lost two things. In September, I found them both. Yes, I looked for them, but when I couldn’t find them, I considered them both gone and replaced them. After all, they were only a garden trowel and a paring knife. I found the knife after our [...]
I’m a design show junkie. Fashion design, furniture design, house design, garden design, food design, even Lego design. Who cares what it is? When I find a design show to watch, I get all tingly and excited. Watching the creative process is exhilarating and inspiring. And some designs that come out of that process are [...]
After I pulled out the peas I had diligently planted and tended because their season was over, a lone sunflower remained. I smiled at it, wondering how it got there. Perhaps a bird or a squirrel or even the wind left a single seed to grow sheltered and nourished by the peas. It smiled back [...]
Words and actions have lasting effects… In 1969, having been in California for a year and moved from one job to another, I ended up working as a bookkeeper at Capitol Records in Beverly Hills. It was the place everyone in the industry came to get records, and celebrities often dropped by. One time I [...]
Is Your Twig Too Big To Fit In The Hole? This might help… A movement caught my eye. A flutter up. A flutter down. It was a wren with a long slender twig trying to get it into the small opening of the birdhouse. Up-down, up-down. Holding a stick in its beak wider than the [...]
This might help— I don’t think I want to meet the person who knows all the answers. I believe I would be suspicious. How could they be so sure? Did they cause the problem? Are they trying to ruin people’s lives? Do they know all the facts? Our brains are designed to filter out what [...]
I opened the drawer where I keep candles and flashlights and realized that I still had two beautiful scented candles waiting for me to use them. It reminded me of my mother’s candle drawer. Actually, not just one drawer, two big ones stuffed with candles of all sizes and shapes. She never lights them. Even [...]
Habits are wonderful. Except when they aren’t. The habits I like are the ones that keep me in line, moving down the road towards where I want to go. Habits I don’t like are like ruts in that road. Ruts can be challenging to get out of, especially when we do the exact opposite of [...]
Last summer, I watched wren families move into a nesting box. First, they took out what was already in the box. They were so industrious. For hours the wren would pop in and then pop out with old nesting material in her beak. She’d toss her head to throw it and then pop back in [...]
Why want what we already have? What a glorious year we have had. All of us. Yes, glorious if we choose to look at it that way. The glorious part? For the first time in our memory, the world has shared an experience that affected us equally. But the living of it and its aftermath [...]
Fixing broken things is not an activity that most of us enjoy. The plastic knob on my mixer broke off, and I didn’t celebrate that I would need glue, a clamp, and time to fix it. What I said to myself was, “I can live with it. Who needs a knob anyway?” But the shower [...]
On the way to yoga, I saw a man walking down the street proudly displaying his political affiliation. It was not mine. So for a split second, I judged him. And then I judged myself for judging him. A few blocks away, I stopped judging us both and thought about perception. Yes, my favorite topic. [...]
While the Soleis traveled as slowly as possible, the Eos was moving as quickly as it could. So fast sometimes, Meg wished that it would slow down. Like Stryker, she didn’t like ships either, and for many of the same reasons. Mostly, she hated the rocking and rolling. No matter what she did, she constantly [...]
Shifting Stories: Sampling Books, One (or 2) Chapters at a time. Your imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions. —Albert Einstein Now that you have the basic tools, are you ready to get started? Each week has a different focus, but the imagination exercises each day will remain mostly the same. [...]
BECA LEWIS coaches, teaches, writes blogs and books, plays with art, and is addicted to reading. She lives in Ohio with her husband and has kids and grandkids scattered across the country.
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