In support of our goal of uncovering and discovering our True Selves, we’re starting a series of eight explorations that are intended to be enjoyable, not onerous.
Treat them as if you were seeking a hidden treasure.
You may want to grab a notepad or a tablet—a place for you to capture your findings so that at the end of eight weeks, you can easily look over everything, see themes, come to conclusions.
Week 1 exploration:
- Leave your home.
- Prepare to come back inside your home, but not as you, as a detective. To make it fun, pick a sleuth to emulate. Bones? Bosch?
- Imagine that your detective’s job is to figure out who lives here, what matters to this person, simply by studying the things that are in their home. PRO TIP: Because it can be difficult to see familiar surroundings with fresh eyes, make yourself a finder. Get a thick piece of paper and cut a rectangle in the middle, perhaps 2” x 1.5”. You have just created a finder, a way of isolating what you see.
- Use your finder as you detect your way around your home.
- Make notes of what you discover about the person who lives here. What is this person involved in? What do they read? What do they do for play? What kind of clothes do they wear? What does how sparse or full the space is say about them? What objects appear to be important to them? Is there anything the person has hidden?
- Trap your learnings: write a paragraph summarizing what you believe to be true about this person based on what you have detected.
- BONUS POINTS: Maybe there is something you detected that fluffed up some feelings in you. Write about those feelings.
Chewing the Cud of Good
Glad to be writing from here, and to be with a many-decades friend.