“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen.
“When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
– Lewis Carroll
Almost fifteen years ago, I finished a crazy idea of getting a big old doctorate in mythology, and then got another one off the ground with the birth of a family resource center in my community. And then I decided I was bored. So I invited (okay, dragged and browbeat and lured) my husband to leave a cushy world in Southern California to the next crazy idea: finding a piece of history in the Catskills that we could dream into a new life as a place for imagination and possibility.
And I realized, more than anything, I love chasing crazy ideas. Going after them is about courage. And tenacity. And stubbornness. And wildness. And not agreeing to what the world tells us is impossible.
So as we talk together, you and me, and all of the friends (real and imagined) who may show up for the ride, I want to invite you to think about your wild and wondrous idea.
You know the one… The one that sits curled in your belly, the big dream, the soul desire, the thing that you’d do if you could do anything, but the world has convinced you that is too crazy. Too audacious. Too idealistic.
That one. The impossible one. That’s the one we’re going to make happen. This is about bringing that adored, fragile idea that you’ve been afraid to tell anyone about to life.
Too many of us wake up one morning and discover that we’re somehow living alongside our lives. We’re doing our best, busy with all of the stuff that we’ve taken on – responsibilities and loves – but we’ve ended up missing that one thing that brings our genius into the world. We get convinced that somehow we’re not worthy of going after our soul dream. That it’s greedy to want more. That we should be content if things are pretty okay.
Well, that’s just not true.
Going after what you want, that big, wild idea that gives you the most juice is exactly what the world needs. It’s the opposite of selfishness. How different would the world have been had Mozart decided that he couldn’t dare to make music? Or if Ghandi had decided that peace and justice in India was bigger than he was? Or if that teacher who lit your fire as a kid decided that she didn’t know enough to try to inspire her students?
The world desperately needs us to have the guts to bring our magic to life. Take a second and think about the people you most admire. Do you know what they have in common? They all had the audacity to go after what they were dreaming. Their crazy idea. Their own genius. However big or small that is.
Why shouldn’t you?
Welcome. It’s going to be a wild ride. I’m so glad you’re here.
(Want to share a wild idea you’ve been loving on? Drop a post in the comments!)
I enjoyed your opening piece – makes me feel inspired. I’ve got a couple of wild ideas but I’ve had a few in the past and have doggedly pursued them to realization which has taught me that maybe they’re not that wild. Either way, they are what keeps me going. The two that stick with me and drive me now are to one day, drive from Staten Island, New York (where I’ve spent most of my life) to Staten Island, Argentina and back. It is just off the coast of the southern tip of Argentina. The second idea which I am slowly chipping away at is to link all my disparate story ideas in one mega story arc – linking my children’s book series with my novels and a graphic novel thrown in along the way. So far, I have written one novel and am almost done with one children’s book so have a long way to go since the end result will include 4 novels, one graphic novel and at least 7 in a series of children’s picture books.
Oh Allan, I love both of these ideas! I love their intersections of personal and global. So – two questions:
First, is your novel published yet? If so, where can we find it? and
Second, what could friends and colleagues do to help make both of these ideas happen?
Hi Leigh, Thank you! To answer your two questions, yes, the novel is published. It’s titled: The Other Son and the best place to find it is on lulu.com. it is currently self published but a small Philadelphia based publisher picked it up so it will switch over to them soon. It won the philosophy category in IndieReader’s Discovery Awards and received good reviews from Kirkus and IndieReader but I always ask if people want to read the reviews to see the edited versions on my website since otherwise they’re filled with spoilers: http://www.allanavidano.com
As for the second question, I’d say I think what friends and colleagues could do is to believe in me- that I’ll be able to accomplish these things.
Fabulous! Way cool. Thanks, Allan. I will happily check it out – and will share!
And, oh, man, yeah – a community that believes. Huge. Huge. Huge. And I think it takes tending. Going to muse on that a bit. Thank you!
Haha, so it’s not too late for me to get into Oxford? 😀
OK, Oxford, NY … I can maybe manage that. 😀
LOL! It’s never too late!
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-45011367
Buckle up, here we go. Something is calling me, no screaming to me. I am compelled to follow the call and I don’t know where this will lead. Gonna find out.
Marcus, I love this. Am here to cheer you on however I can!
I love that you are inviting us to play, Leigh! Running on the figurative treadmill has invited me to check out, and I need to check back in to regain my presence. The regular rhythm has made me comfortable … and no comfortable oyster ever produced a pearl. There are a lot of cuisines I have never sampled. But how to make it happen? I’ll let you know what I come up with.
I think you need to start with eating oysters! Keep me posted, Marc… 🙂
I like wild rides…let’s go!
Ride on!!! xo
Hope it’s okay to still be defining the idea! Half the path for me seems to be allowing myself to think about something – anything – outside of my “normal life” in the first place. 🙂
Of course it’s okay! I think that move of allowing yourself to dream outside of your responsibilities is not only the first step towards a wild idea, but also can be the hardest. One way to do that is to start with a small one. Wild ideas can be vast and tiny…and they matter, regardless of size. In some ways, I don’t think the scale matters at all. The shift in agency to seeing our lives as a creative dance rather than a predetermined circle of tasks or a hard slog to the finish is what changes the world. It is a way that the old idea of a butterfly wing flapping can change air currents enough to change weather on the other side of the world makes sense to me. Small moves, sometimes just internal and personal, can open up all sorts of possibilities. And not every wild idea needs to – or should – have a world salvation implication in itself. (Talk about heavy!) Sometimes, small moments of delightful silliness are the best wild ideas, with no particular goal other than their own delightfulness.
After completing “The Artist’s WAy” for the first time in 1996 I committed to sitting down every weekend in Lent that year and writing an allegorical book that had been inspired by a reflection exercise in a Spiritual Direction program I was in at Mercy Center in Madison Ct. The reflection was to imagine something magical – and I chose a Tree – One with Purple Fruit which I called “The Truth Tree” . When anyone came near this tree they experienced a deep feeling of being loved, and if they ate the fruit, they had the realization that we are all one with each other, with all life on this planet and with the highest energies of the universe. As I sat each week (7) to “Write” the story of how this tree came to be the chapters were essentially ;dictated’ to me …all 7….and involved a woman named Evelyn being invited to live in a simple gardener’s cottage where she met a Child named Eva who guided her through the garden and joins with her to share their stories, joys and tears that result in the Truth Tree growing.
I became frustrated with trying to get the book published and put it in mothballs until felt called last fall (2018) to rewrite it and retype into a usable format (was on Floppy discs that no one could translate even in early 2000’s to an editable form.
Oh, Gail, this sounds like a totally lovely project. So totally cool that you’re resurrecting it! One thought about publishing – you might look at what Amazon offers for self-publishing these days, if you’re tired of trying to find a commercial publisher. More and more authors are self publshing now, and with eBook and Kindle options on Amazon, that can be a great place to start.
Here’s a place you could start to learn about it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-summary-page.html/ref=footer_publishing?ld=AZFooterSelfPublish&topic=200260520&ie=UTF8