Judging A Book By Its Cover...

We all do it...

We've made up our minds about a person, a situation, an event, a thing based solely on outward appearances...

And we miss so much of the richness life has to offer us by this short-sightedness...

For example...

I did a bit of self-promotion on Facebook today, putting up links to my two websites - 

www.metamind-creative.com and www.metamind-spirit.com ...

If you click on the links, you'll notice that I've used Comic Sans for the font on both...

I got an immediate response from a Facebook connection.   In addition to a private message, she posted the following in public:

SZ: If someone you know just put up a new website promoting their business services....and it's done in Comic Sans, what do you tell them? (My heart stopped when I saw it.)
 

EAS: I would suggest - gently - that perhaps that particular font isn't the most professional-looking. I love that font, it's my favorite for personal correspondence. But definitely a no-no if one wishes to have their business taken seriously.
 

ETB: LOL! Politely suggest to them that it's not really a professional font. What else can you do?
 

DD:  www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/20/comic-sans-strikes-again_n_653035.html

SZ:  Brilliant, DD! Loved that link.   I had to tell her the truth because I like her and I know no one will ever hire her based on her website. I glanced at it for ONE SECOND, gasped and clicked off as if I'd seen the most offensive thing in the world. That was my honest reaction. I did tell her Comic Sans' only appropriate use is for a birthday party invitation for a kid under 5.  EAS, why, oh why, do you "love that font?" Doesn't it scream "immature" to you?

EAS: Hehe... you say "immature", I say "free-spirited". Hence my only using it for personal stuff. ;)  The link was awesome, too. Yet another example of inappropriate font usage. ;)

MY RESPONSE:

Sahila ChangeBringer: I want to thank you SZ for your feedback, and you're not the first person who has had that reaction, and been good enough (really, I appreciate the honesty and courage) to let me know what they think.

            I use the font DELIBERATELY... One of the ideas I work with, with my mainstream and 'other' clients, is that our beliefs shape our reality... and those beliefs are often based on ideas that might once have had value but are for the most part obsolete... and judging someone as "professional" or "immature" by the font they use is one of these cases...

            I sometimes facilitate workshops (where none of the participants have met me before), turning up in the scruffiest, oldest clothes I can find...

            I don't try to establish my credibility... I don't really introduce myself, we don't do the round of 'feel good' warm-up stuff, we just get straight into the hard stuff...

            I do it to move people out of their comfort zone, to take them off balance and to get them to recognise their own limited perceptions and how they respond when things are presented in ways other than the 'norm' or 'the professional'....

            And at the end, I explain what I was doing and why I was doing it... and I ask them to notice their response... It's very eye-opening...

            How much do we each clutter and filter our perceptions about life and people based on how it/they 'appear' to us? Do I only have credibility if I present myself in a certain way?

            How do you judge a beggar on the street? Do you judge him as a 'loser' by his clothes, or can you see past that outward appearance and be open, listen to the wisdom of his experience/life journey?

I've seen the most 'professional' looking people do the most unkind things, and not be good at their jobs...

I've seen the poorest, most 'unattractive' people give and give of their love,  possessions, practicality, common sense and hard physical labour until you would think there was nothing left to give, and then they'd give some more...

I've read the most wonderful words in tattered, humbly bound and  plainly typeset books...

... and the most vapid claptrap in lavish, high quality production tomes...

You can't tell a book by its cover...

An Act Of God...

Saturday morning...

Surrounded by stuff, some in boxes, more waiting to be packed up and moved...

Thank god it doesn't all have to be done in one day, though it would make the utmost practical sense to get it over and done with...

Stuff...

Hate it...

It needs caring for, cleaning...

 - though cleaning could be considered an act of genocide, with each swipe of the cloth killing billions of microbes!

It takes up energy, time, attention, space...

It cramps my style - I can't just get up and go whenever an amazing opportunity for new adventure comes along...

It's a ball and chain around my ankle...

I want to do what I challenged others to do on a Facebook thread about the global energy/food crisis and our own personal responsibility in that - reduce all my possessions down to 20% of what I have now, and live in a space that is 20% of  what we now occupy...

Better yet - give it all away and walk the earth with nothing but a begging bowl, doing what I can where I can...

 Stuff...

Love it...

It gives me a 3D sense of continuity, of travelling my life path, of connections I've made, places I've been, people I love and who love me...

I've got a gift for 'arranging' it, decorating houses, creating warm, inviting, calm spaces that people tell me are like a "sanctuary" and they say they wish they could do what I do...

It brightens my world with beauty and light, with imagination and memory, with colour, texture and sound... 

- though I'm surrounded by that in every dimension, in all of the eternal now, if I have eyes to see and the awareness to be awake to it...

In some weird way, it makes me real, solid, in 3D... 

Or I think it does...

As though my stuff is me?

Who am I without my stuff?

Would I cease to exist?

Would I have existed at all, if I don't leave any stuff behind as evidence?

- and does any of my stuff mean anything to anyone else, or will it just be nuisance clutter, to be given away, dumped, discarded, after I cease to be physical?

 

When I took my first family of kids to live in Australia in 1996, we were without our 'stuff' for more than three months.

Through some mistake, our own 'stuff' sat in a container on a wharf for that time, instead of being shipped to Brisbane.

So I had to rent and buy basic household necessities while we waited for our 'stuff'...

Three months without art, music, books, knick-knacks, personal items filling the space we were inhabiting...

We didn't miss it at all...

And then the boxes etc were delivered and there was the fun of unpacking and remembering and choosing where things would sit/fit best energetically...

And in a week or two, it was all being taken for granted again, a backdrop to the routine of living... 

In many ways a limited and limiting definition of who we were, as individuals and as a family...

A self-created prison... a mask, a facade, a half truth and a half lie of who we are that we present to ourselves and project out to the world...

My higher Self wants to let it all go...

My small self wants to hold on...

I would not grieve if an Act of God destroyed all our earthly possessions...

Do I have the will and strength to be that Act of God?

Do I have the right to make this choice for my son?