Create something beautiful

I stood before this installation in New Orleans stunned. People from all over this neighborhood and all over the world have come to fill in this sentence. "Before I die I want to..." And then they wash the chalk off the wall and it gets filled up again and again.

I stood there stunned. I couldn't put words to my own dreams.

And then it came. Before I die I want to CREATE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. I think that is my deepest desire.

And yet. Yet. Yet. I struggle.

I spend hours consuming. Pinterest. Shopping. Reading. Watching. Absorbing. Escaping. Anything but creating. Why do I do this???

I don't know what the beautiful thing is yet. Maybe it is this space, my offering to the community of creators and writers and thinkers. Or maybe it is one of the many little seedlings of ideas that sprout in me and haven't yet been birthed into reality. I keep dreaming of my little ambition to make pillows. Maybe like these, but somehow different and my own.

Or maybe my beautiful creation is something even yet to come. I hear a little voice that says my beautiful something is a life well lived. Or a marriage nurtured over time. Or every day in my classroom. The moments and conversations and prayers and rites of passage that I journey with my students. Or a baby and a family that one day might be.

Is that it?...Yes! And...I still think there is MORE. The something beautiful that I create hasn't sprouted yet. Or hasn't found me yet. But I wait and I yearn. It's in me yet.

(Credits: Artist of the "Before I Die" project is Candy Chang. Pillows made by The Print Society and sold at Follow, in Sydney, Australia.)