Thursday, May 2, 2024
Think back to the kinds of pretend games you played. I pretended to be a conductor. Behind our house by the creek, a reed-type of grass grew that made the most beautiful conducting batons! I used them to conduct the symphony of stuffed animals in my room. I also played school. My friends would come over, and in order to enter the backyard, they had to answer a series of questions. I loved inventing tests and getting them to think. I also pretended to play church organist. I got my first keyboard at a young age and would play hymns for my “congregation.”
All of that “messing around” as a child led to a career that incorporated all of those pretending games. Don’t you realize that you can pretend your way to anything? Pre- means ‘before’ and tend means ‘to go or move in a particular direction.’ The word comes from the Latin praetendere and means to ‘stretch forth, claim.’
Pretending is stretching into the future, moving into a particular direction, and tending to your dreams. But the future is murky. It’s messy, isn’t it? So how do we stretch forth and claim? By “messing around.” You reach into the messy future with ideas. You engage in play and you imagine. What springs forth from all of that “messing around” is reality. That’s how the universe started. It was a hot, dense, “mess,” and time and space formed. Life was the same way. The conditions were impossible and messy, and it formed as if the odds were against it.
What’s wrong with messing around? It’s the only way. Pretend to be or do what you see yourself doing, and like magic you’ll create the life of your dreams. Other people are pretending to be “adults.” Be a kid again. Stretch forth and claim! Your imagined future awaits – go ahead and mess around.