Do Maps Come Looking For Us?

Do maps come looking for us? I have a feeling they do.
Does beauty come looking for us? I have a feeling it does.

These are learned things for me. Over many years. Over many efforts. And over-efforts. I’ve worked hard in my life to learn things. To seek things out. It’s the diligence that many of us show. So that we can understand. And take part in the world. And do our jobs. And raise our kids.

And yet, in my later years (sheesh), I seem to be noticing (and want to notice) that those things also come looking for me. The maps. The beauty.

It’s a pretty important nuance and evolution to story. From “gotta make it happen; gotta search hard” to “it shows up quite naturally when we see softly; it shows up quite naturally when we anticipate abundance.”

Maps. Ways of seeing. Frameworks to understand the connectedness of things. I am a visual learner — took me until my mid 30s to recognize that. So I like seeing concepts in a collage. Post-it notes. Or circles around words on a page. In color. Maps come to us. Maps that…, want to be created?”

Beauty. Like this bouquet above, now nine days old. Mother’s Day flowers for Dana from her son Andrew. We can be extensive in our search for beauty. Yet often, it’s right here in front of us. Beauty is a vibrancy. A vibration. Yesterday I added to the bouquet our first-cut white Peony of the season.

These days, I so often feel this shift in my day to day. It’s celebrating what arrives, particularly when I release the necessity of struggle. Particularly, when I start with an assumption of abundance.

This learning sounds very spiritual. It is. Yet, my spiritual these days is so much about nuancing a consciousness. From what is hard and efforted. To what is naturally occurring and abundant.

Hmm…

Yesterday, one of those maps arrived to me. I was exploring and journaling about a phrase that I used with a client — “pithy yet potent.” My client and I laughed together because we both knew that the phrase was an in-the-moment thing. I was encouraging her to have courage to name what is small, yet is actually quite big — pithy yet potent. As so often happens for me, I see two or three things that help shape the story.

This time a story of pithy yet potent human behavior and needs —

kindness,
spaciousness,
companions.

Start there — kindness, spaciousness, companions. Do these. Start here. The rest will follow. The rest will show up. The next map. The next bouquet.

Do maps come looking for us? I have a feeling they do. And perhaps, always have. I, and perhaps many of us, are learning to be found.

Does beauty come looking for us? I have a feeling it does. And perhaps, always has. I, and perhaps many of us, are learning to catch it.