I am sitting by the lake, the water a smooth sheet of glass that mirrors the high grey on white sky above. The morning sun waits in the distance to break through. The birds tweet and chirp in the trees that stand silent and thick at the water’s edge.

Ah. This is paradise

C.C. and I have come to visit our dear friends U and A at their lake house on Barry’s Bay in Ontario. Normally, autumn leaves would be turning red and gold when we come to visit but this year, we had a wedding in Toronto on Canada Day weekend and decided to make a longer trip of it.

We spent the weekend in Toronto. The wedding was Sunday. Monday was a family BBQ where C.C.’s brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews gathered to celebrate en masse, Canada Day and a chance for everyone to visit with the out of town relatives. And then, for we two, an hour and a half drive north to Orillia where C.C. and I spent the night with the amazing Alyssa Wright and Don Bray.

And now, five days by the lake before we fly home on Sunday night.

Ah, yes. This is paradise.

There is something about the peace of the lake, about visiting good friends, about spending time kicking back with no agenda but to breathe into the rhythm of each day that soothes my soul. It restores my spirit and sets my mind to wanderings of what if…

What if… I were to focus my attention on… and the ideas pop like kernels of corn eager to become the ubiquitous yumminess of popcorn slathered in butter waiting to be devoured in the glow of a fire sparking in the night. Each thought enriches the next, leading me away from habitual “I Can’ts” to that place where anything is possible when I open myself up to my infinite capacity to create more of what I want to experience and create in a world full of wonder and awe and limitless possibilities.

I am a creative soul. I know this. Have always known this, even in those times when I tried to fit myself into a box of non-creative cloth.

And I have also always known that stifling my creative essence leaves me restless, dissatisfied and grumpy. Immersed in the minutiae of life on the ‘road well travelled’ I see the down side of everyday and leave myself little room for the wonder.

It is an interesting phenomena to me, that when I detach myself from my creative essence, I live behind a wall of disbelief that would have me believe – happiness, joy, elation are not available to me with every breath. Disconnected from my joy, I fall into the belief that joy has no place in my everyday world. Cut off, I become committed to ‘getting it done’ without really committing myself to doing it for the joy of it, not the necessity.

In Adam Kahane’s Tranformative Scenario Planning: Working Together to Change the Future, he writes of a man from Zimbabwe who, when sitting in a room of individuals from every facet of Zimbabwean society who have come together to build a new plan for the restoration of Zimbabwe, said, “In Zimbabwe, we often build our houses behind high concrete walls (we call them durawalls) that prevent us from seeing anything going on outside. In our society, we do the same thing; we sit within the durawalls of our own thinking and are not aware that there might be other ways of looking at what is going on. I think that the objective of this project should be to take down our mental durawalls and enable more of us to see more of what is going on.”

I came on this holiday with no intent other than to breathe deeply into each day and let the spirit of the day move me.

I’m changing my mind.

I’m getting connected. Getting inside my spirit’s call to awaken me to the wonder of each moment shimmering with joy all around me.

I’m taking down my durawalls to see what is possible outside my thinking, to hear what is real beyond my belief and my disbelief of what I think is going on, or not.

I’m immersing myself in my creative essence so that I can live from that place within that sees wonder and joy all around. That place where I am connected to my essential essence, my essential nature that knows from deep within my soul, anything is possible when I release myself of the limitations of my thinking and set myself free to be, me in a world of infinite wonder.

May your day be filled with awe. May you see beyond the durawalls of your mind to all that is going on, can go on, will go on when you release the limits of your own thinking.

Namaste.