Calm by Nature

“There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.”  (G.K. Chesterton)

Remember looking up at the sky as a kid, your imagination running wild with the shapes of the clouds? 

You saw a face .. a three-legged horse .. a frozen waterfall .. a mountain .. an angel’s fluffy wings .. a crazy cake overflowing with icing .. To a child’s eye there were endless possibilities.  And it was really cool when one shape morphed into another! 

Few adults seem to cloud-gaze.  It’s like there’s an unwritten law which judges ‘daydreaming’ as a waste of time, unproductive and simply child-ish. 

But how can opening our minds to possibilities be wasteful? 

Who’s to say it’s unproductive?   It’s surely impossible to scientifically measure the seeds of imagination and what grows from them!

And when did we install a rule that says it’s not OK to just chill and see what happens? 

Stretching the boundaries

What if we could stretch the rules and stretch our minds for even a few minutes?  And what happens if we don’t?

Without a vivid imagination there would be no Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter - characters created by adults and who appeal just as much to grown-up readers as to kids.  These books and the films they have spawned help us expand outside of our familiar everyday reality and I believe we are all the better for that.

Nature and imagination

Nature also provides many opportunities to tap into our own creative imagination.  As well as cloud-watching, I like to explore what I can ‘see’ in rock formations  or to guess what birds might be ‘saying’ to each other (I often wonder when a pair of lorikeets flies past whether the squawking is the female nagging the male to help more with the nest-work!)

There’s a curiosity too about where I might be ‘transported’ when

• smelling freshly-mown grass
• biting into a juicy mango  
• touching a silky smooth rose petal
• hearing a windchime in the breeze

and wherever I end up ‘going’, I inevitably return richer for the experience.

A client I worked with realised one reason she was drawn to wide panoramic views was because they represented the freedom of being able to go in any direction and the unlimited potential that offered.

If you are willing to expand your personal horizons even briefly, who knows how far the power of imagination can take YOU?

Nothing limits achievement like small thinking;  nothing expands possibilities like unleashed imagination. (William Arthur Ward)