This article explores how change can create new opportunities:
When my grandmother was young, my great-grandpa would plane board by hand and the wood would make small curls. He would give them to my grandma to make curls on the head of her dolls. In this way, this excess or waste became part of someome else’s world and added to it. I can imagine she would smile as she’d see the “doll hair” being made with the plane. Meanwhile, he was probably trying to get the board the right dimensions for a building project. These two very different worlds converged here.
In our practice, whether in teaching, or in making work like writing, art, photography, video, music, digital tools or any variety of media not invented yet, or in providing a service, we often need to trim the fat. We need to cut the hedges, sand the edges, or refine what we are doing. More than that we need to see where we need to put resources and what we need to stop doing. This process can be likened to pruning trees. They need to be trimmed in order to be healthy and produce more fruit.
When we remove branches from the tree, in order to make it grow, or remove parts of our habits to be more efficient, where do they go? Can they be repurposed?
Energy is neither created nor destroyed. When we redirect energy, can we redirect all of it, or do we lose some along the way? How do we carry energy with us? When do we stop resting on laurels and chuck the wreath into the sea and skip new rocks?
Going against the grain is an entire shift; it creates friction. While it’s tempting to carry all the energy we have created with us, sometimes the wagon is heavier than the new journey needs. In this case, we change.
Too often though we go on the path of least resistance, gliding smoothly. When do we choose to go against the grain?
If you do make the shift, like doll hair from the shavings of a board, you can make something beautiful.