Inspiration comes in so many forms—and for that matter, forums—and so it was on Christmas day— ordinary imagination. However, being with Molly on Christmas day was extraordinary. Molly is my granddaughter, just at a year old now. Molly never stops.

Up and down the L-shaped hallway… Who would have thought pushing a small step ladder around the room 50 times, or climbing two flights of stairs- up and down, up and down, would be so exciting.

It was interesting to see how quickly the new toys were pushed aside for the ordinary stairs and a kitchen step ladder, or a few Cheerios.

As the venerable designer Lou Dorfsman, of CBS fame, once said, “Creativity is the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea.” Your soul should be filled, “it should be spilling over,” with everything you’ve paid attention to.

When we up-and-down an ordinary house staircase, we can absorb inspiration from the carpet, from the shadows, the light falling, the challenge of the step— one to the next, the discovery of the Christmas ornaments on the stair railings.

What do you notice? Are you noticing anything, or are you so busy balancing your Starbucks while dialing your cell phone you forget to? Hang up and look around; at least smell and taste that coffee. Or sit down and truly listen to a small child—your sister, maybe, or a granddaughter, and the nonsense syntax of a child’s gobbledygook—her quirky little colloquialisms, her smile, her eyes that light up.

Or, get up as I did this morning to feed her at 6:30- -she likes getting up early (a good trait right away)— the ordinary of breakfast, and if you look close enough it can be the greatest adventure you’ll have in the entire year.

It is a great example of teamwork, I thought- she can’t do it without me, so we have to work together to develop a rhythm, a system… and heaven knows we cross-platform from one medium to the next at nano-speed.

It’s not so different from the way we are transitioning our own cross platforms today. You go from scrambled eggs to Cheerios, to a sippy-cup full of milk being tossed across the room. Or maybe it’s as McLuhan once said, “Diaper backward spells ‘repaid.’ Think about it.

So, take a listen closely to me today, because I promise you, in a few years, probably when the newness of your adulthood starts wearing off and your everyday lives start wearing on you, you’ll recall what I am saying, and it will matter to you.

And in the meantime, you’re going to need this no matter what, just in order to do your own best work. Because your best work is going to come from your own best stories, and for those stories to actually be their best, you’re going to have to really pay attention to your lives.

Such ordinary inspiration leads to the best, the richest, and the most superlative beauty—beauty that is felt in the heart.

Georgia O’Keefe imagined it this way, “I said to myself — I’ll paint what I see — what the flower is to me, but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it…”

Maybe the ordinary as inspiration is about our need to express our feelings in a material way. Art, being a ‘made thing,’ creates a distance between creator and thing, thing and audience. Paradoxically, it closes distance as well, as we share and experience the meaning of that thing made.

Well, not that she says a lot just yet, but I think maybe what Molly teaches, reawakens me to remember, is if we look at ordinary things as she does— through her eyes—it will be as though seeing them again for a very first time.

Imagination comes from things that move us… So, what moves you?

Happy New Year. And here’s to realizing the extraordinary of the ordinary, in 2008.

Hank.

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