A Walk Can Be a Question

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Detail of wooden gate on Divisadero St.

 

Sometimes, when I feel the nudge, I take a walk here in the city over from my place to Divisadero Street and then walk down Divisadero toward Market Street. As I walk this section of Divisadero, I thoroughly enjoy the feeling in this part of the city. There’s a lot going on. I find inspiration everywhere: in the people, in the diversity in general, and in the architecture and design of things. Like the gate above, the color, the creativity, the craftsmanship.

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afternoon light

There’s a cafe I love. The people are friendly enough, but also have that hip edge. They combine the love of coffee and bread, baking the bread fresh there so the smells fill the space. The windows and high ceilings offer amazing light to work in. They play music is from a phonograph and records (and often the music of my teenage years). And the customers are hip in a design kind of way.

I walk, sometimes stop in the cafe, and generally just soak it all in. And, I find that when I return home, I am inspired to dive into and work on what has been sitting on my desk waiting for my return.

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Victorian detail

The inspiration fuels my creativity. Diversity in people and in all things does that. It feeds and nourishes us and our own essential expression.

When we’re working hard or perhaps even struggling with something that we don’t quite know how to move forward on, it can be helpful to remember that we aren’t separate from the world. Often, this idea is seen as a kind of esoteric, spiritual idea – you know, like the idea of Oneness in that we aren’t separate from each other. But, it is a practical understanding, too. When we venture into the world in a state of amazement and wonder, following the thread of the things that spark our interest in the things we intrinsically love, we stimulate our creativity. We become aware of ways things can bridge together. We become aware of ideas and insights that can be just the thing to spark what is waiting on our ‘desk’ for our return.

Our creativity is fed by what is present here, right now. Life responds to the questions we ask, even when the question we are asking is something as simple as a walk down Divisadero Street.

Yes, a walk can be a question if we are open and attentive, and listening deeply for the answers life is offering.

Life is a creative process, so any walk, activity can be such.

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Red light overhead

And, when you are deep in a current process, actively strategizing within the incubation phase of this process, activities you consciously engage in to stimulate responses, knowings, and cross-pollination become rich sources of inspiration for that wonderful AHA! moment you are working toward.

When I take a walk down Divisadero Street, paying attention to all that appears before me as I go, I come into direct relationship with the answers life is offering to my question. I am stimulated by life, by the things that inspire me.

A practice for you.

If you’re working within a creative process right now – and I am sure you are as just about everything we do is in some way a creative act – make time to explore. Take a walk down a street or path, or to a place that inspires you, that calls to you. It might be in nature, but it can just as well be in a part of town that stimulates you. On your walk, pay attention to everything. Look for a particular color, or a particular shape, or a particular anything that gets you to really look at your surroundings in a way that is brand new. Then, watch what happens.

Fair warning:
This can cause you to be happy, feel alive and grateful, and unleash your creative joy into the world!

 

 

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