Wild Curiosity

Colleen Rice, Photographer,
Curious Nephews

Curiosity killed a cat! Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."
-- Eugene O'Neill, Diff'rent

When clients who have had their creative lives or passions on hold come to their Wild Work, the first thing I ask them to do is to choose actions that help recover the curiosity they had as children. Ask people questions. Say "tell me more" when someone speaks a belief different than yours. Go off on side paths meant for wandering and wondering. Do something you haven't allowed yourself since childhood. Just watch for a while, without labeling what you think is happening. Find "why?" coming into your mind more often.

Children explore freely, enthusiastically. They take risks. When adults step in with fear or disapproval it kills their curiosity. (As does the absence of a parent, since a perception of safety and sharing the pleasure of exploration are key ingredients.) Adults, and especially artists, need to take risks too. Watching where we allow expressed or perceived disapproval to diminish our creative gifts is a great way to free up energy that can be used for one's art and work. I notice what tends to cut off my inquisitiveness is another's anger or judgment, which I'm learning to be curious about as a way to increase intimacy. I've also formed several good creative friends who will tell me what they see as the truth in any situation in which I feel stuck. I can check my actions and thoughts with them, and they're like my curiosity life preservers.

I'm curious about people and what motivates them. When I go back to Kentucky, in the region where I was born, I order a sweet tea and a barbecue sandwich and sit for a spell at the Shady Rest, where I like to listen to the conversations of the people around me. Writers call this research, not eavesdropping. I'm not interested in the specifics of what people say but in how they say it. I wrap myself in the dialect, its rhythm and inflections and silences. What subjects do they talk about? What shorthand do they use? How are they connected to the land, their history, the politics of the day? It was at these tables that I began to recognize the spiral-like dialogue of people who live on land for multiple generations. There are side stories of cousins and funerals and family reunions that sweep back toward the original subject before circling out to a peripheral talk and then back again. A dozen subjects, all interlinking, woven in a common knowing. Because of my curiosity, I learned of the complexity of these mostly rural people. I also learned that as a woman who has lived in a dozen places, I have never held the knowledge of what a place was before its current incarnation. As in: "Down by old Jim's Tavern, when it was a juke joint, before the gas station came in..." When we explore the world, we're exploring ourselves -- we find connections and differences that can lead us to further inquiry.

Being curious turns us into the quester. We learn more. We experience novelty (which produces dopamine in the brain, thus elevating our sense of well-being.) Once we start to break through our own barriers and fears, our curiosity can carry us, opening us to potentials we might not have known existed. Explorers, inventors, innovators, artists, and great leaders happen because they remain curious when others would seek to usurp the investigation.

What will you do to power up your curiosity this week? Here are a few of my choices:
* See what kind of colors mixed paints will create
* Have a meaningful conversation with a stranger
* Watch a film someone else suggests
* Try going slow and fast at the park to see what happens to my sight
* Ask my friends what this autumn is bringing on their curious quest

Wild Testimony

tes·ti·mo·ni·al:
1. A statement in support of a particular truth, fact, or claim.
2. A written affirmation of another's character or worth; a personal recommendation.
3. Something given in appreciation of a person's service or achievement; a tribute.

Sonya brings a unique and exciting perspective to the world of work. I
am always delighted to refer clients to her. A remarkable resource!
-- Pamela Grace, psychotherapist, author, workshop leader

Sonya is for those who want their work to embrace and express the soul's true path - whether launching, running or revitalizing a business. Sonya has been a trusted guide and ally for me through the whole process. She brings extensive knowledge, fine-tuned intuition, incisive analysis, and useful tools. And she has always been there when I felt uncertain or discouraged. Thanks to Sonya's help and a lot of hard work, I'm on my way to realizing my dream.
-- June Blue Spruce, life coach, shamanic healer and dreamer

Sonya draws upon a wide range of tools to create an extraordinarily thorough and unique service. Her entrepreneurial expertise in business is matched by her creative capacity as an artist in word and form. Sonya is also deeply intuitive. Time and time again her readings have provided practical insights and tools for both my personal and professional life. To receive Sonya's gifts is to receive from the Goddess herself!
-- Anne Douglas, yoga instructor & therapist

Sonya's combination of insightful compassion and business savvy was the perfect guide during the breakthroughs and transformations I needed to live my dreams. I am now moving to a completely different part of the country pursuing my life-long desire of a successful art career. Our work over the last year and a half has been an important piece of claiming my own wild woman ways. I am jumping off the cliff, and the universe shall meet me!
--Melissa Weiss Steele, artist

Wild Ambition

A few weeks ago, we were in Banff in the Canadian Rockies, getting ready for the last hike of our holiday when a freak storm hit. Within a few minutes, hail was flying around us, like the Goddess had cast off her string of pearls. We watched the forest as the wind corkscrewed trees out of the ground, and listened to the sirens stir around the village, attending to the stalled movements of summer tourists and townies.

My friend Anne came in from the beach, and as the storm continued, we started a conversation that lasted most of a day while our families napped and read and ate Cornish pasties (the meat pie, not the erotic adornment) that we’d packed for the hike. The conversation would become one of the most seminal events of 2007 for me, full of insights about what it is to live a wild and free life. Even after the storm subsided, I abandoned the plan to play just a few more hours on the trail, and paid attention to the weave of talk and contemplation that nature had opened up for me. Those spoken words would become the rich humus from which I would write my new film, and we would later see that this day of rest was exactly what was required before we re-entered our busy lives.

I teach planning. Or rather, I help people remember what they already know about how they want to live. Together we design ways to, as author Alice Sebold says, “realize that in the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted." We often characterize what we think we do not want as mistakes or failure, still, these are truly the moments that are making us, shaping us into the kind of people who can make our visions real.

Many years ago, when I was an employee, some guy told me the best planning went like this: “Ready. Fire. Aim.” (I mentally wrote my resignation letter as he spoke.) Today I would tell him that I believe battle language enacts war, and that I get what he is saying -- sometimes we just have to try things, see what happens, absorb the 'failures', even give up our original idea for what is taking shape around us. Really though, in this state of wild ambition, no mistakes are possible. We're free to invent and create in what the Zen masters call "spontaneous right action," resting in the awareness that reality can not fail us. This isn't about having some 'secret' knowing that will provide us with everything we desire. Wild work is about seeing that our choices (and mistakes) are informing how we live and prosper. For some, staying in from the storm is building the life they want; others will need to dodge falling ice at the peak.

The planning work I do now is to help people notice when they’re holding the original idea too tightly, or when perseverance is required. It’s less about self-assurance, and more about what can happen when we’re not so tied to our definition of ‘who I am’. It's about distinguishing when we are making things work, and when the work is making us. Stay tuned to this blog for regular updates on what I call wild ambition -- that moment of abandon colored with focus, elegance and grace.

What's your vision for your life? If you want to learn more about working wild, contact me at sonyalea@gmail.com or (206) 729-2270.