One of my items was "architecture/design." I have no illusions that I will become an architect, but I have been passionate about the appreciation of architecture for most of my life. When I was younger, I liked the regularity and predictability of classical architecture, but certainly over the last two decades what has truly excited me has been modern architecture--20th and 21st Century.
I've made two trips to Spain to metaphorically worship at the fount of 20th Century art and architecture in Barcelona, making a 10-hour side journey to Bilbao to see Frank Gehry's marvelous Guggenheim Museum masterpiece. The poetry of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water" mesmerizes me, and when I visited New York City with a friend a couple years ago, Wright's Guggenheim was the only thing on my list of this to see.
Today in a friend's Facebook post about a totally different subject, there was a magnificent building in the background. I used my snipping tool to send the image to another friend who lives in the city with the question, "What's this?" I discovered another architect. I don't have to understand where this part of my exploration will end. All I have to notice is that my heart races a bit like a young woman in love when I see these buildings. It was just on my list and, like ladybugs, it came to me so that I could notice what brings me to life.
Literally, almost in parallel, I was listening to a podcast of "People's Pharmacy," a show to which I had listened for decades before moving to Washington. My local station didn't carry it. I just discovered their podcast, and I've been binge-listening to their programs from the last two months. I was intrigued by an hour-long interview with neurosurgeon Dr. Allan Hamilton, who also trains horses and wrote a book with a similar title to mine--Lead with Your Heart in the Horse Pen and in Your Life. Well, the title was similar until the Horse Pen part, but many of the topics were similar.
About the time the picture of the new-to-me architect's building was landing in my email inbox, I was listening to Hamilton describe a situation he'd been in with a skittish horse. He was in the mountains when a storm blew up. His particular horse was afraid of water. If you haven't had the privilege of being in the mountains, especially above the tree line, when a storm blows in, it is about the most terrifying thing I can imagine, as lightning flashes all around you. I can't even imagine being on a skittish horse at such a moment.
Hamilton said that his first instinct was to try to control the horse because of its history, but almost as quickly he was moved to just let go. Hamilton said he tied the reins, laid them down, and let go. The horse found its way down with no episodes with the horse's fear, and soon they were in the parking lot.
The other half of the ladybugs story is the laying-down-the-reins part. Putting on the list is the first part. Receiving is the third. In the middle is putting down the reins. I haven't exerted a second's time on my "Things to Explore List;" they've just happened, and I've been receptive.
However, in a very different way, I've been trying to make something happen with this blog that doesn't want to happen. When I was writing every day a couple years ago, I had around 700 regular readers all over the globe. I have no idea how they found me but some of the same ones were there every day. I was particularly interested in three people in Albania that read almost every day. I did nothing to stimulate these readers or lead them to the blog. I metaphorically let go of the reins, and they found me.
Then, as I wrote more rarely, readership dropped off to almost nothing. Now that I am writing regularly, I wanted more readers again. It's what we're supposed to want to happen, isn't it? But, the truth is, I think I write as much to help myself on my journey as I do for others, so why should it matter? Getting readers had never been an intention for the blog; it was always about sharing my journey and hoping others would benefit from it. If a few people read it, and find it helpful, shouldn't that be enough for me?
I think it should, but I haven't been satisfied. A friend taught me the rudiments of Twitter, and a couple weeks ago we began tweeting about my posts. Almost immediately my readership grew to 6-7 times its previous low readership. Not a bad start, I thought. What else could I do?
Last week I asked three people who I knew to be regular readers if they would retweet our messages. None of us are really tweeters, but they have been supportive, but an interesting thing has occurred. The number of readers over the last week has dropped...to fewer than before my "efforting," a term sometimes used when we try to make our intentions happen, rather than being receptive to allowing them to occur. (My apologies to my friends that I've engaged in my efforting.)
Maybe I am only writing this blog for myself and for a handful of readers. If that is the case, that's fine because I get benefit from writing, and they value reading it. So, I am taking Hamilton's advice and putting down the reins. We might also use a phrase I've used in this blog before: "Let go and let God." But, no more efforting.
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