I Am Very Exciting!
The beauty of a typo leads to a mantra
I’m piling up some doozies in the Department of Typos and Autocorrects. In a recent email sign-off to a friend, in which I meant to say, “I’m very excited!,” I wrote, “I’m very exciting!”
Yup.
I am very exciting!
Well, not really. I get excited about ideas (the persistence of beauty), activities (riding my e-bike and swim adventures), nature spottings, moon sightings, family and friends. Recently I’ve been over-enthused about my new Speedo swim bag, my jungle-y pajamas, a pink stocking cap with an embedded light. I am a soft baby-swell of daily-life semi-excitements.
Why not be exciting?
At first re-read, I saw my typo and blushed, then laughed. What a braggart. I do like it when people claim their greatness and kick the false modesty to the curb. So I indulged myself in imagining that “I was very exciting.” I started to consider the following interaction:
“How are you?”
“I am very exciting!”
Why would stating your internal exciting-ness be anything but a great thing? It’s not personal.
When I need to remind myself that nothing is personal (even though it feels like it, ouch), I go the basics: I am a corporeal suitcase inhabited by a spirit named Tatyana. You, too, are a spirit/life suitcase. Can’t you feel the jumble of snap, crackle, pop going on inside your suitcase every day? What’s going on? What’s next? I mean, who wouldn’t feel exciting? Let’s take birthdays. I recently had one. I sometimes feel coy if someone doesn’t know it’s my birthday. Why bother them, or embarrass them that they’ve forgotten. I’ll let Facebook do the heavy reminding lifting. But why not run out and tell the world? It’s not like I had anything to do with this particular day being my birthday. I can simply be exalting in the fact: I’m alive, isn’t it cool? And you’re alive too, also cool. Let’s use my birth date as a way to remember how cool Life is.
Even if I’m in a bad-ass mood, and not especially loving life, I can still be in awe of Life. I don’t like to fly, but even at 30,000 feet hurtling through the sky in a tiny compartment of compressed people scared out of my mind, I’m still in awe of the invention of flight.
Look at us, the miracle of humans, drawing air into our bodies, keeping ourselves alive with oxygen and knowing how to do that; our hearts beat like faithful assembly line workers, blood speeds through the super-highways of our veins; we walk and talk, love and create, have fits and argue, grieve, suffer, and still hang in there when things are tough or seem downright hopeless. We get out of bed and go to work (or swimming, for many in my circle) on a cold dark morning when we “don’t feel like it.” It’s a miracle! We are fucking miracles.
All this to say: Humans are very exciting!
Shall we be very exciting together in 2022?
I used to spend December reflecting on the year gone by and considering the gorgeous clear canvas ahead. (I forgot during the pandemic; I forgot I was exciting.) While the world was holiday shopping and decorating, I’d be in a cafe with a notebook, warm coffee, and daydreaming out the window as I searched for a mantra to take with me into the new year.
This year I’m going with“I am very exciting!” I’m approaching 2022 as a year for new projects and undertakings, some of them long considered. I know I’ll feel a bit knock-kneed and scaredy-cat-ish at times. So “I am very exciting!” is my verbal dragon-slayer.
Let’s shout our heads off just because we have a cup of hot chocolate to drink from, like my granddaughter Riley, age 3. Kids really know they’re exciting. Let’s be exciting, too.
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For eight weeks, a group of curious minds will come together to open those beauty portals, get our wet noses sniffing with curiosity, delight ourselves, learn, let loose of conventional thinking, share passions and intrigues, re-energize, inspire, and expand our capacity for beauty and mystery in everyday life.
Topics include: Beauty as the purpose of life; Defining and expanding this thing we call “Beauty”; the beauty of not-knowing; the persistence of beauty; taking beauty off its pedestal; beauty as the road to increasing capacity to hold all things. And wherever our noses take us.For more info, visit Everyday Creative Coaching Salons