What motivates us? What makes us get out of bed each day, and feel excited to be alive?

Fred says: you got my attention NOW!

For each of us, this answer is different. I can only speak for myself. I appreciate all the different ways that each person connects to whatever compels them to live a life as fully as they can. Thank goddess we all have different passions! what a boring world it would be if everyone of us thought the same things worthy of our undivided attention.

Take this next photo as a for instance. These are the bedsheets of our daughter’s after she awoke some years ago. Nobody in our family noticed — and the key word here is NOTICE — how the blanket and sheets has somehow, pertenaturally, magically, arranged themselves in exactly the exact shape, size, and curled-up manner as our recently (then) deceased family dachshund, Fred! Until I happened to “notice.” Then — everyone saw them! Saw Fred in the bedclothes. This is not a joke. The sheets were untouched, and only Fonya, our daughter, had slept in this bed. It was she who was perhaps most close to Fred when he was alive, although our son Cully might dispute that fact. Here’s the photo, untouched except for a filter that unfortunately, made the sheets appeared yellowed.

Fred came to visit our daughter, see? Do you notice?

Since a kid, I’ve always been fascinated and pulled by knowing as much as I can about what I came to call “the Secret of Life.” For lack of any better word or phrase, this is the feeling of knowing about things that make my eyes pop out, or take my breath away — or give me a sense of “ahhh, I thought so!” in my heart region, a felling of expansive warmth in my belly — these are the things that have always made me want to know more.

The first focus of this chest-thumping curiosity I noticed within me, was with Nature. Everywhere I looked, when I was outside, I felt connected! I felt part of! Being outside, with Nature made me feel I was surrounded by an extension of myself! Not like how I felt inside, either in a structure, a car, even in a tent. I had to be out in the Wild.

Even in my dreams … I am in the WILD, witnessing the actions of myself and others

My first memory of exploring Nature was escaping from my childhood home to find the quietest, most secret, most away-from-inside place I could find. This usually was up in a tree, when I began my explorations; and then later, away from my yard, my neighborhood, down a forbidden street, into a taboo shaded grove, anywhere! seeking an open field, a mysterious woods, an unpopulated corner of the world where noise and people were not.

Eventually, I guess I must have been around six or seven, I did find a “secret” place, that to me, was all mine. It was some sort of abandoned well, or at least in my grownup memory it seems to be some kind of colonial type water-getting stone place, circular. I can picture seeing a round formation of stones, well filled-in by the time I found it, of course. Old wells have notoriously always been extremely dangerous for people to fall into. But I can vividly picture this “secret sanctuary” of mine still, to this day, as a hidden away, deeply forested place, seemingly forgotten about by everyone else, but discovered by me in my everyday quest of endlessly exploring. I was always getting into “trouble” for being too far from the homestead. I’m the first one to admit being guilty of having an irresistible urge to “runaway” as early as I can remember. Perhaps it was my natural instinct to explore, more than anything, not to “escape” from any unpleasantness going on in my home. My folks were happy, healthy, interested-in-life type folks. It’s just that my natural proclivities to know more exceeded even theirs, at most times, even in my earliest childhood.

As I grew I discovered the unlimited world of creativity as the next, logical realm to explore. I started off copying everything and anything I could! Wrecking book after book, unfortunately, but I learned to be an expert draftsman at a very young age in this manner. When I found out, with few swipes of a pencil, a crayon, a brush, that I could create something no one had ever seen, or even imagined before — well, let me tell you I was absolutely blown over by the POWER I had last tapped into, found right within my very own self!

toddlers, children, teens, adults — we all need to BE creative!

Throughout my life’s continuing exploring of exciting things worth knowing more about, creativity has always been the focus of my energies. So many different ways a person can express themself creatively! Science, music, even business and sales and keeping the economic flow in a creative upward wave. Virtually everything can be done creatively. Keeping house. Cleaning. Paying the bills.

That’s why I totally get-it about social media-ing these days. I’m not a naysayer like a lot of others in my generation (yes, I’m a boomer!). I love the so-called narcissistic trend, especially of young people and spreaders of positive-thinking (I’m guilty of this last category, I readily confess) of documenting their lives via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and other picture-taking sharing platforms. Everyone gets to be, at least feel, creative with a smartphone in our hand.

What better way to express yourself creatively, than to capture what interests, you, what turns you on (or off!), and share it with the world? I’m all for the abundance of creative explorers this new wave of sharing every minutiae of life, via the many types of SM. Facebook is out, Insta’s in: what’s next? Whether we choose to dive into every aspect of sharing on social media that’s presented, well, that’s another story. Mostly, what I do, is flip through the variety of life’s experiences (an intentional simile to William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experiences,” a groundbreaking work of early 20th Century consciousness exploration, documenting the inner journey by a Harvard professor of psychology) — and only “dive in” when someone else’s passion coincides with one of mine.

What’s your passion? I’d love to hear about it. Thanks for sharing. Here’s an easy way to do it. Sending you my Love, your pal LordFlea, aka teZa Lord

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