Day 148: Am I always expanding?

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Day 148:  Am I always expanding?

Day 148.

Pretty much disconnected from everything yesterday.  After sleeping a lot more the last couple of nights, it seems that I am actually more tired now—delayed travel fatigue?  I did make it to a friend’s moving sale and scored two adorable candles and a couple coffee mugs for the bargain price of two bucks.  It was good to see some lady pals and catch up on their goings on and what I consider their exciting expansion.

Expansion.

Such a nice word.  Such an interesting concept.  Dictionary.com’s definition of expansion is:

1. the act or process of expanding.
2.the state or quality of being expanded.
3.the amount or degree of expanding.
4.an expanded, dilated, or enlarged portion or form of a thing: The present article is an expansion of one he wrote last year.
5.anything spread out; expanse.
6.Mathematics . a.the development at length of an expression indicated in a contracted form, as a 2  + 2 ab  + b 2  for the expression ( a  + b ) 2.  b. any mathematical series that converges to a function for specified values in the domain of the function, as 1 + x  + x 2  + … for 1/(1 − x ) when x  < 1.
7.Machinery . that part of the operation of an engine in which the volume of the working medium increases and its pressure decreases.
8.an increase in economic and industrial activity (opposed to contraction).    
 

I can literally be expanding and not even know it until I put on an old pair of jeans and realize I now must call them “skinny” jeans because I’ve expanded so much they don’t fit anymore.  I think intangible expansion—expanding our minds, our perceptions, our consciousness—is the same way.  It’s happening and we may not even know it because what’s happening in our lives is so challenging or painful or “can’t see the forest for the trees” difficult or, on the other end of the spectrum, it’s so beautiful or fun or interesting—we don’t know we’re expanding on every level.  The friend having the moving sale is in such an exciting state of expansion to me.  Some might say she simply has a lot of change going on but those changes are a part of her life—her digs, her opportunities, her outlook, her career, her potential, her heart, her soul—expanding in incredibly amazing and wonderfully different ways that will take her places she’s never been before, places she can’t yet imagine or dream of—whether she realizes it or recognizes it as positive or not while she’s in the middle of it.

There’s been much expansion going on for me so far this year—some I can see, some I can’t.  I can barely get my jeans buttoned.  That I can see for sure.  I’m not going to lie, I’d like to contract my fat a bit and expand my muscles in the coming months.  Finishing my portion of the editing was incredibly expansive for me and something I can see now but in the middle of it, I thought it was going to kill me.  Every day I did it, every day I got through one more scene I expanded my confidence—as a filmmaker, as an editor, as a person—and my documentary film’s movement towards completion.  Expansion.

I can’t help but wonder how doing nothing yesterday might have expanded me in ways I can’t see yet.  Or was I just simply in a state of stasis?  Is “no change” sometimes a part of change and ultimate expansion?  Am I always expanding?  Probably.  Definitely.  Well, at least I’m pretty sure that everything—and even nothing—leads to and is a part of expansion.  Okay, this is getting a little too deep, time to sign off and go expand whether I know it or not.

Until tomorrow, create from what you have…expansion.

Kelli Joan Bennett is a filmmaker, actress, writer, entrepreneur, advocate for creative thinking and Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Think Outside The Box Inside The Box Media.

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