MAKING MESSES

Ask any kid, making messes in the pursuit of creativity and play is fun! Waaaaaaay more fun than cleaning up afterwards.

"Moooooooom," our 11 year old yells down the stairs. "Can Jake and I build a foooooort in the living roooooom? Please? Mooooooom?"

"Only if you clean everything up before your father gets home from work."

"Ugh, forget it."

The fort is the fun. Pulling out every blanket in the house and flipping over the chairs and draping the furniture to create an awesome hidey-hole in which to act out stories and play is the fun.

Folding the blankets and replacing the furniture and making sure everything is back in order after the mess isn't "fun" but it is the responsible thing to do.  On that particular day, our son decided that the fun of building the fort wasn't worth the price of cleaning up afterwards.

Kids gleefully paint and splash and build forts and pull every outfit out of the closet playing dress-up. Which is as it should be. When creating, it is important to play freely and enjoy the art of the playing.

The next step is cleaning the mess. (If a baby can pull a toy OUT of a bin, they can be coached to put it BACK.)

Ooooh, that makes a lot of kids mad, doesn't it? Have you ever seen it?

But, good parents, teachers and leaders don't care if the kid gets mad. These adults realize that, in the improv of life, playing and making messes is worthwhile fun but the other half of creation lives in that space AFTER the fun.

Integrity lies in owning the "mess" and accepting the responsibility for what we've created.

WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' RULES . . . OR DO WE?

RULES

When I say that word, the people who hate rules scream, "Too many rules!"

"Screw the rules! Do whatever you want!" they chant.

But, in the improv of life, there are "rules" for everything.

Would it help if whenever you hear the word "rules", you think "parameters"?

Parameters are boundaries, they're guidelines.

Every. Single. Part. Of. Life. Adheres. To. Rules. Or. Parameters.

You can break them -or try to break them.

I'm grateful to the folks who created the airplanes in which we are able to fly to quickly get to other parts of the globe. These visionaries applied thought and different parameters to break the law of gravity.

I saw these: Images from Brickcon

If you click on the link, you'll see photos of amazing things that artists created out of Lego Blocks.

Lego blocks have rules. They have rigid, plastic parameters. Yet, artists create an endless array of amazing art pieces out of these rigid, rule-filled bricks.

Instead of screaming "no rules" and banging their heads against the IDEA of rules, the greatest artists instead sing, "I'll create within the rules, within the parameters."

I love that.

In your own personal life improv, are you stuck, repeatedly bashing your head against the rules? Or are you free, repeatedly using the rules to inspire you to express yourself?