#rawthought” Wild Hearts

A while back I made a pact with myself that not all my blog posts would be grandiose…with lots of original illustrations and catchy subtitles. Blogging can sometimes be an overwhelming task (if one does it right), but as a consequence can amount to one forgoing the blog altogether for fear of the time commitment. I wanted to capture my fleeting thinking (flinking?) and therefore came up with the concept of #rawthoughts. I’ve now written several of these pithy posts, and here is another:

I bought a bag of conversation hearts before Valentine’s Day. I had this whimsical idea I was going to bring them to my Visual Thinking workshop at EdTechTeacher’s Innovation Summit in San Diego and either use them with the participants somehow or roam around the streets of downtown San Diego placing them in ironic spots and doing guerrilla art. Didn’t happen. I lugged them back home and have since sifted through, eliminating the duplicates and eating all the white ones (those are the peppermint and IMHO the only edible ones).

There was one that stood out amid the “Not Now”, “My Lady”, “Mega Babe” (?!) and “Kiss Me”…it’s pictured above. Yes, like its cousin the fortune-cookie-sans-fortune this chalky candy bit had no words for me. It was completely pink (at least it had that going for it) on both sides. At first I considered it to be defective…I mean, the POINT of “Conversation Hearts” is that there is evidence of some conversation, no? And then I thought – what if, instead of it being a mistake, it’s really more like

a “wild card” – non-prescriptive and replete with possibilities?

What if, indeed, things we often took as faulty or lacking were really at the very least tabula rasa…and at most,

limitless opportunities?

I must admit I’d had a difficult day the day I discovered the heart. I’d just been rejected from an opportunity and was feeling a little sorry for myself…but to be honest that never lasts long with me. In response, I drew this:

Hopefully, I can take this lesson of the wild heart to heart…that is, the proverbial “looking at the glass half full” kind of attitude.

When I posted the naked candy on Instagram, a friend (@seenarich) left a brilliant comment that added another layer to the metaphor…she said:

“Open heart or empty heart?”

I’m going to keep that little candy for as long as it will last in the humidity of Hawaii- and whenever I feel like things aren’t going my way or I’ve got the short end of the stick, I’m going to remember how much I love unlined, blank paper,  that sometimes ADversity can lead to ADventure, and that there is power in our perception.

I want a world with more wild hearts.

#fate #opportunities #conversationhearts #possibilities #perception #attitude #valentines #amyburvall