141 Marbles
There’s a lady who paints amazing pieces of art on rocks and sells them at the local farmer’s market. She uses every contour and blemish in the rock then paints it with inspiration from mythology, fantasy, and symbolism (check out her magical pieces at michellevulama.com). She told me a story recently that caught my interest - her larger pieces are valuable as they take her countless hours to finish and she had recently completed one of these multi-thousand dollar pieces when she dropped it and it split into two. Obviously she was upset to have the piece ruined and she put it away and started on another piece.
Some time later, she came back to the fragmented rock after she had gotten over her disappointment about the accident. She sat with the pieces, wondering what to do with them. Then she started painting the blank sides that had been divided. When she was done, she mounted the two pieces onto a base so that they could be turned to reveal the paintings inside. The result of this “accident” was by far the most interesting piece and it also had the best story.
Other stories involving “accidents” - old Archimedes who was banging his head against the wall trying to discover a way to measure the volume of irregular objects. When he got into his bathtub, he shouted “Eureka” when he saw the level of the water rise before his eyes. He recognized that the volume of water that was displaced must be equal to the volume of his submerged body parts. He was so excited that he jumped from his tub and ran naked through the streets of ancient Greece.
And then there’s Alexander Fleming with his discovery of penicillin. He was researching staphylococci when he went on holidays, messily stacking his samples in the corner of his lab. When he returned, he discovered that there was a mold growing in some of his sample dishes but the samples with the mold no longer had some strains of bacteria. This led to the creation of mould juice or penicillin as an antibiotic. Fortuitous accidents.
The amazing thing about these stories is that it reminds me to avoid judging outcomes that don’t fit in with what I had hoped would happen. They remind me to avoid labels such as “accidents” and they help me expand my vision of possibilities. In addition, the rock lady’s story is a perfect metaphor for a break up of a relationship. Most of us don’t go into relationships thinking about the inevitability of a breakup but if they do break apart (no matter how stable and solid they had seemed) the only question we’re left with is, "What do I want to paint on the broken pieces?"
What are you not seeing because you're too fixated on seeing things in a certain way?
There’s a lady who paints amazing pieces of art on rocks and sells them at the local farmer’s market. She uses every contour and blemish in the rock then paints it with inspiration from mythology, fantasy, and symbolism (check out her magical pieces at michellevulama.com). She told me a story recently that caught my interest - her larger pieces are valuable as they take her countless hours to finish and she had recently completed one of these multi-thousand dollar pieces when she dropped it and it split into two. Obviously she was upset to have the piece ruined and she put it away and started on another piece.
Some time later, she came back to the fragmented rock after she had gotten over her disappointment about the accident. She sat with the pieces, wondering what to do with them. Then she started painting the blank sides that had been divided. When she was done, she mounted the two pieces onto a base so that they could be turned to reveal the paintings inside. The result of this “accident” was by far the most interesting piece and it also had the best story.
Other stories involving “accidents” - old Archimedes who was banging his head against the wall trying to discover a way to measure the volume of irregular objects. When he got into his bathtub, he shouted “Eureka” when he saw the level of the water rise before his eyes. He recognized that the volume of water that was displaced must be equal to the volume of his submerged body parts. He was so excited that he jumped from his tub and ran naked through the streets of ancient Greece.
And then there’s Alexander Fleming with his discovery of penicillin. He was researching staphylococci when he went on holidays, messily stacking his samples in the corner of his lab. When he returned, he discovered that there was a mold growing in some of his sample dishes but the samples with the mold no longer had some strains of bacteria. This led to the creation of mould juice or penicillin as an antibiotic. Fortuitous accidents.
The amazing thing about these stories is that it reminds me to avoid judging outcomes that don’t fit in with what I had hoped would happen. They remind me to avoid labels such as “accidents” and they help me expand my vision of possibilities. In addition, the rock lady’s story is a perfect metaphor for a break up of a relationship. Most of us don’t go into relationships thinking about the inevitability of a breakup but if they do break apart (no matter how stable and solid they had seemed) the only question we’re left with is, "What do I want to paint on the broken pieces?"
What are you not seeing because you're too fixated on seeing things in a certain way?
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