Whether it’s by surrounding yourself with interesting sculptures or by travelling to a different country or through something as humble as getting out to the natural history museum,
The best strategy for opening your imagination is getting out of your everyday.
The people I meet in Mexico think it’s funny that I love their little, dusty, cobbled-together town. It’s so different from what I grew up with that I find charm around every corner! The same thing happens any time you’re in a different environment, or surrounded with that which is outside your usual experience of the world.
We went to our local natural history museum the other day and it immediately fired up my imagination and capacity for wonder.
From getting to be near enough to tiny moths that I could stare longingly at their delicate and complex antennae to being inspired by the many strange and varied shapes of fossil animals, the natural history museum (despite being very tiny) never fails to increase my capacity for wonder and amazement at this amazing world we are a part of.
Take this crocodillian fossil.
I must have walked past this fossil dozens of times in my life and never until the other day did I notice this amazing texture on the plates and the delicate curving shape of this animal’s ribs. I’ve even fallen in love with the perfect imperfection of the wavering outlines of the bones.
God is in the details.
And what happens when we function too long within the realm of our everyday is that we stop looking at the details. We can’t see them anymore. When we get out of our normal environment or change something about our own (like with the addition of a large, organic sculpture by a particular nature artist, aka > me!) then all of a sudden, the details jump out at us and we are struck dumb with wonder.
We would all be happier if we were struck dumb with wonder on a regular basis.
Print out these moth notecards I made for you, hang them up in your office or better yet write a letter on the back and mail it out to a friend. Strike someone dumb with wonder, and spread the happiness.