I wrote this day after a really rainy night at home, I’d gotten my wisdom teeth out 6 days prior and hadn’t been outside or even in a state o up to doing anything for days. My husband returned home after a boys night dinner at 10.30 just as my movie finished (I watched a musical, because he hates them so its my only chance to watch them haha) I had so much energy and he handed me permission in a raincoat and a trusting smile even though he add to work early the next day and needed to go to bed, his lost sleep awakened my wonder.
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Of all the things and shade he could have thrown at me at 10.30pm at night, he threw me his rain jacket and umbrella. It was as though my heart were a ball that was once flat, now it had air in it and it simply couldn’t help but bounce off the walls of our tiny little apartment. He knew the ball needed to be let out, and demanded I put my snow boots on and do a lap around the block.
His rain jacket smelt of lived in adventure, which I gladly placed over my silky pyjama dress. I placed my boots on as though they were my dad’s size 14 gum boots and I were 10 years old; my excitement had been wound back 16 years and saw this rainy night as though it were the most magical wonderland.
Taking the longest route around two blocks I danced off the sidewalk, I tapped down the streets and spun in the air. I was Dorothy of Oz, then Mary Poppins, then Luke Skywalker then Harry Potter; an umbrella and some rain makes for the most transformative playground.
We need to play, we must play! It’s essential to our bodies and minds, we lose so much of our childish ways when we grow up, but childlike play and imaginaition was never one we were designed to lose, if anything it can only grow stronger the more we use that muscle. As a kid the raindrops turned into laser beams and the umbrella a magical forcefield, my gumboots were springs that bounced sky high and in that moment the world really was magical.
So begs the question, what happens as we grow older? What’s takes our joy and wonder away?
I danced down the dark, dead streets with not a soul in sight, until a man on a bike road past that I hadn’t seen in my flurry of flouncing limbs. He said “I saw that”, and those three words were as though three years were smacked onto my 10 year old dancing delight. A now 13 year old teenager, aware of what I looked like, constantly wondering if others were looking too (I’m sure you remember the feeling)
So was it fear or worry? What I lost in the “watching” for others who could be watching was the dance, the magic, the imagination, the wonder. For what I lost what did I gain from my constant worrying of peoples thoughts? Nothing! No single thing!
Would I rather die with my worries and live a “society normal” life? Or die with my wonder and dreams and have lived a life full and free - complete freedom of creative expression? What kind of life and attitude am I myself inspired by?
So I took the umbrella off that I had placed below my head to hide me from the world, and I ran and skipped with no shields, I was soaked in the best way! Soaked and drenched in delight – always a choice I’d take over being safe and dry in dismay and displeasure.
What deadens desire?
What kills dreams?
Is it fear like loud streams?
Is it judgement like burning fire?
In streams they drown, in fire they burn and brown.
So I’ll walk over streams and build a bridge called faith,
I’ll fill my buckets from dancing in the rain and spread it all over the fire,
I’ll tell fear and judgement they are liars.
Mind and heart awake with childlike dreams and desire I tossed and turned in bed. 2 am felt like 9.30 in the morning after an ocean swim and a green smoothie. Wonder has a way of doing that, turning what seems like tired dark sleepy nights, into bright and cheery fresh mornings; it truly flips worlds, especially those that we create in our minds first.
I took a good look in the mirror and said to the sparkle in my eye, “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you alive”. I barely slept a wink that night, but boy did I dream.