Thursday, April 9, 2009

What's your frame?

The geezer, Al, and the geezerette, Joanne, were tooling down the highway to Chicago to celebrate Lars' 40th birthday. I was getting a little bored so I thought I'd see if I could get a rise out of Joanne by proposing to see how far we could drive after the warning light on the gas gauge came on. It worked, and she made a rather forceful statement about what I might experience should we run out of gas.
That got the wheels spinning in my mind. We often say to each other, "could you re-frame that?" when we think the other has taken an unnecessarily negative view of something. The lens, or the "frame" though which we view something really determines much of what we see.
So...what if we viewed an experience, for example running out of gas, as an adventure? Adventures have mystery, curiosity, energy, excitement and often leave us with good stories to tell. "Remember the time we ran out of gas on the way to Chicago and that family of 5 picked us up in their Dodge Neon?" On many of my adventures I often encounter the kindness of strangers.
So, many miles passed as I contemplated what life would be like if I framed more of it as adventure. But, no, I'm not so hungry for adventure that I'd run out of gas like that.

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