Dear Diary,
This morning I was listening to a podcast lecture by the author of a book on the mind of Einstein. He was a former managing editor of Time, and an executive at CNN. He was speaking in California’s Silicon Valley. He began his lecture by talking about imagination and creativity in relationship to Einstein. It was Einstein, of course who proclaimed , “Imagination is more important that knowledge. ” The author and speaker talked a great deal about the importance of Einsteins imaginative abilities, hbow he thought of math and physics with pictures in his mind. His creativity, led him to be the most famous theorist in science. He could take his knowledge, play with it, dream up ideas and theories, and then of course use both imagination and knowledge to prove them. For together, imagination and knowledge are quite the team.
Yesyerday I was researching quotes. My favorites are always the ones I find while reading myself. These are the best ones as they are slightly more obscure, and the thoughts in them, are speaking straight to your own consciousness. The problem is I loose these in my thoughts, remembering them only for a day or two after reading them. I just bought sticky notes to encourage me to write them down as I find them and do something with them. To collect them. My daughter has been collecting fortunes from fortune cookies in her school cafeteria. She has a tiny pile of papers. Perhaps I could start a similar collection in a jar. Ideas from good thinkers.
As I get ready to teach the workshop with Doris Eaton, I have been thinking of creative ways to put things together. We have thirty people gathering this year during the Nova Scotia Fibre Arts Festival for our Hooking in an Impressionistic Style Workshop. It is like having a small wedding, or celebration. You have to think about the food, the place, the fun, and bring it all together. I enjoy the planning, but I really love the culmination, the learning and how it lights people up. I just finished two workshops on creativity, texture , colour and design, and I saw lights coming on in people’s faces. Those lights energize and excite me. It makes me want to turn on more lights.
I am so lucky to be so excited by what I do that I can hardly force myself to take a day off. Yesterday my husband , Robert and I were walking down the road and David Carter, a local contractor stopped the car, as he often does to talk to us. David said his son was moving out to a small place in Manitoba to teach. Robert said,”Are you going to take a month off and go out and see him?” He said his wife had never flown, and that they had to see. We teased him that he was in a good position to take off as his father was still well and active in the business. We laughed together, and then it occurred to me that like us, he had no real desire to leave his business or his life for a month. I said that, and he said, “Yes Deanne, sometimes an excuse will do, sometimes it is just what we want.” Sometimes an excuse will do, isn’t that the truth for so many things. Rather than having to lay it all out, tell it how it is, we can rely on the simplicity of an excuse, to provide us with what we really want, what we choose.