Remember: Long Soft Strokes

P.M.A. = Positive Mental Attitude

I am not an optimist. I'm not a pessimist either. I am more of a worse case scenarioest. (Yea I know it's not a real word) If there is a tall building of conclusion you can bet I'll be at the top of it ready to jump off at the slightest hint of things not going as planned.

As Planned! I always have a plan. Most times there is the obligatory Plan A that is full of hope and P.M.A. However just in case that doesn't work out I have a Plan B which usually has nothing to do with PLAN A but instead involves the beating up of myself to ever think Plan A was feasible. Like everyone I have set out on Plan A many times only to lose that P.M.A. that will take it over the top. How to leave the station and arrive at the destination with everything in tact is a concept that seems to have been lost to me.

We all start off with a beautifully blank canvas for our lives. If we're lucky we will have parents who begin to share the colors on their palettes with us. They will show us all the wondrous colors and teach us not only how to enjoy these colors but how to paint in wide, sweeping, beautifully soft strokes. As we grow they relinquish more and more control of the brush to us till finally this canvas is truly ours. There will be times as we grow that friend's will loan us some of their colors and we paint like mad, mixing theirs and ours till the rainbow of colors are truly amazing.

Seems, as adults most of us forget how wonderful it was just to paint on the canvas with no plan or direction. We bring ourselves to a place where we paint with short and meaningful strokes. Our colors diminish as we carefully plot each stroke ever sure that they all connect and no motion is wasted. We hesitate to allow anyone else to lend us their hands or their colors. Our visions become so tunneled to our canvas that so often we miss what others have been busy painting.

My plan A was pretty simple. Find a match, a heart, and a mind that I could somehow connect with. In this case I don't think I had a plan B but one sure has developed and taken over. I am amazed at how at a whisper, a word, or a smile others have reached across to my canvas. They have placed their hands (minds & thoughts) on my brush. They have brought to my palette their colors and encouraged me to use them. They've eased their canvas closer to mine and encouraged me to look over at their canvas and marvel at the panoramic scenes they create. With a nudge and a smile they've showed me how to paint with wild abandonment again.