What does it take to transform one thing into another?
Flour, sugar, butter and water are some of the basic ingredients that go into the making of beautiful pastries such as those that filled a window in this pastry and coffee shop.
Enticing and tempting, their tantalizing shapes and forms suggest the pure enjoyment we have of biting into such sweet confections.
Just as a baker transforms the simple ingredients we find in our kitchens into magnificent works of culinary art, so we can take the ingredients of our individualism, uniqueness and innate creativity and fashion them into a life that reflects beauty and substance.
In the process we become transformed from the mundane into the bold, audacious and adventuresome.
Basic Ingredients
All of us have the basic ingredients to create a life full of promise, accomplishment and contribution. Within each of us are the necessary ingredients to be more than just the ordinary.
Recipe books give us the formulas to take basic ingredients and them into cakes and cookies and casseroles. The recipe of life dictates certain formulas be used to survive, achieve financial security and raise our families.
But within that mixture is the inspiration and motivation we need to give ourselves permission to be creative and go beyond the norm of life as usual.
What would it take to transform your life from the usual static routines to one that is satisfying and robust? How can you put the icing and decoration on your cake? What have you always wanted to do but was afraid to try?
To go beyond the mundane you have to be willing to let go of the commonplace and give yourself permission to explore, to believe you can aspire to greater things.
First you have to imagine. What if I tried this or what if I did that, how would I feel? How would it inspire others? What am I attempting to say with my art? With my life?
An artist, whether using paints or pencils or words to form and express ideas and the yearning inside each of us can transform what is ugly or unpleasant into something of beauty or inspiration.
Throughout my trip to European countries such as Austria, Germany, Slovakia, etc. I saw ordinary, sometimes very old buildings, made incredibly attractive by the use of artistic doors, window shudders and flowers.
We are transformed when we pick up the pieces life has broken and put them back together again.
In the process we not only grow, but rise to a higher level of understanding and faith. In the process of doing, we are changed. We aren’t the same person we were before.
In much the same way an athlete becomes hardened and toughed and his muscles become stronger and more reliable through daily workouts, so too do we get stronger, more resilient and self-reliant when we are stretched in the arena of life.
It is in adversity when we are challenged to do more. It is there, working through the knots and tangles of life where we discover who we are, what we are made of and what we can become.
When we allow ourselves to be transformed above the ordinary and routine, we will find an excitement for life as we discover the recipe that is inside of us to become the wonderful person we were meant to be. You become the piece of art, masterpiece, that is enjoyed and appreciated by others.
Marlene Anderson
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