Crafting Mindfulness
Remember as a kid when you were in dance lessons, or gymnastics, or athletic practices, or summer camp and how excited you would get about going to them? Did you ever think you were crafting mindfulness? Probably not.
You may have planned an outfit, or a certain hair accessory. But the energy was undeniable. You may have been going because your friends were going. So there was a social component. Maybe it was an event during the summer and maybe you didn’t get to see your friends much during the summers.
In hindsight, another reason I enjoyed going was that I loved to learn new things. Even more so when the instructor was intriguing and passionate about the topic he or she was teaching. Heck, I even remember enjoying school for the bulk of my time there. Not because school came easy to me, or because I was popular — I was neither.
But because it opened up worlds to me I didn’t know about.
That light breeze of potential that would swirl around me. Crafting mindfulness wasn’t something I consciously sought out. I just liked to learn and try new things.
Reading stories, presenting in front of the class (nervous as can be), and working on projects that fed a curious kid’s brain.
Don’t get me wrong, not EVERY assignment was fun — doing multiplication tables every night for 30-60 minutes was not usually how I wanted to spend my evenings. But didn’t we all learn something through that?
Discipline. Focus. Applying what we had learned.
Why do I reminisce about these? Because that’s what working on handmade crafts does for me, and for many people who actively crochet, or sew, or just generally create.
Whether you whip something up on the spur of the moment, or you meticulously follow a pattern or any flavor in between, you are continuously learning.
You may be applying something you learned somewhere else. You may be building on something you already knew. You might be learning something for the first time.
Remember the first time you learned to sew or crochet or knit? Didn’t it feel like you were all thumbs? And now? Now, you can hold your own with a sewing machine or hooks and yarn.
You might not be gracing the covers of magazines or DIY TV shows, but that doesn’t make the learning any less valuable or any less significant….or any less life fulfilling.
You know that you can make a quilt to give to your adult kids for their wedding. You can personalize it. Customize it for the things you know they like.
Yeah, you can always go buy one at the store, but how heartwarming does it feel to work on it with them in mind? To finish it with a custom message on the back, and give it to them?
To experience the ooohs and aaaahs that accompany it. How many times do people comment that ‘I wish I could sew’? And you think, it’s really nothing, really.
No, it is Something.
You are a creator.
You create. You learn. And you continue to learn. You are a full-time student in this life and isn’t that one of the many things that make your life so great? If you really think about it?
Your talents, your hobbies, your interests, your tinkerings. Those aren’t just time-fillers.
Those are the times when your soul lights up.
That’s when your brain engages in a way different than when you’re doing laundry or driving the kids to practice.
It’s this creative outlet that allows you to be a better person than you were the day before. You have more thinking capabilities in your arsenal. You approach problems a little differently. You experience crafting mindfulness.
And well, you continue to learn despite the outcomes. Because from every situation you can learn something. It could be something new. It could be a profound discovery.
It could also be something as seemingly small as tweaking the angle of your rotary cutter when you’re cutting fabric so you get a precisely measured cut.
Learning how to present food to a picky child? Continuous learning, and that one sometimes feels worthy of a 4-year college degree.
Just remember, continuous learning is not necessarily taking courses and attending classes. Though those are good and exemplary things to do, especially in areas that interest you. But continuous learning also includes the little actions in daily life that may make us more efficient, safer, or sane. So enjoy the path of continuous learning. It allows us to live a fully gifted life.
Until next time,
Nancy
Crafting Mindfulness
