Can we be artists?

I put forth for consideration: Every action we take is a creative act.  This may seem absurd given the many quotidian tasks we cycle through with a small percentage of our conscious minds engaged. From the way we start our days, our interactions with family, neighbors, friends and co-workers, and the work in which we invest life's minutes, hours, days...years.... (the work into which we invest our lives), we are creating  ourselves, and we are creating states of being within the universe. We are building and honing relationships and setting up our fundamental platforms for meaning.

What follows then is not the question of whether or not every action we take is a creative act. The vital question to ask ourselves is, "How intentional, how aware, how conscious do we wish to be as we create and form our lives, as we create the worlds around us?" Can we make a simple and beautiful thing of the way we say goodbye to our loved ones as we start the day?  Can we invite grace to inhabit us as we run, or as we navigate a busy downtown full of pedestrians? How important is kindness, or humor, or play, as an element (a material) to enrich and influence our interactions with others, be it a stranger on the street, a boss or professor, a child we know?

Make this an exercise for experimentation.  Approach your day as a work of art, a creation that you will hone and craft.  You will guide the lines of the clay, you will build the emotional arc, you will unexpectedly combine colors that cause those around you to completely shift their perceptions. You will be the primary artist for today's creative act.  Be awake. Be aware. Be artists.