It’s easy to play with perspective when you’re in a creativity workshop, walking in a forest, or imagining with children.
Pick up a cardboard tube, feather, or twist tie and oh, the delight to…
try another way… look upside down… flip things around… give in… fall down… roll and resee… twist and tangle… be with the bend and break and blur.
Yet, our play with perspective can quickly diminish in a meeting about “important ideas,” with neighbors who hold “opposing beliefs,” or in rush-hour traffic while listening to radio “news.”
Hmmm.
Pause and wonder.
Where do you play with perspective with ease, rigor, and creativity?
Where do you feel tightness, maybe holding-on, directing, categorizing, or controlling how you (or others) perceive?
What else might you notice about the ways you play (or not) with perspective?
Notice and wonder.
Any moment—conversation, traffic stop, family meal, board meeting, line at the grocery store—can be experienced with the playfulness you’d bring to a twist tie.
The how is simple: Invite curiosity.
Say hello. Ask for help. Breathe. Unfurl.
Curiosity loves to loosen our grip, expand our aperture, open our heart-fields, and connect us to the aliveness of play.
*
Love, Melissa
Related post: Stay and play
Additional Resources:
Curiosity breathes (essay)
More Curiosity, Please! (essay)
Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation by Shari Tishman
On Giving Up by Adam Phillips
Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch
Indirect Work: A Regenerative Change Theory for Businesses, Communities, Institutions, and Humans by Carol Sanford
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown
Button Snail Hum is a pollination project of Noticing Matters.
Learn more and connect with me: melissaabutler.com | melissa@melissaabutler.com
