Dandelion Addiction

This post is dedicated to Suzanne, my partner in addiction.  

Over the past 15 years of our friendship, we have recognized our common addiction with its adrenalin highs and burn out lows. Fortunately, we live on different sides of the country, for when we get together, even by phone, the embers burst into flames, fed by the oxygen of our mutual addiction.  While our connections always inspire and energize us, sometimes they also leave us in a drug-induced state of depletion and exhaustion trying to sort out the plethora of possibilities.

The drug of choice for both of us is ideas ... bright, shiny, fragile, squirrely, slippery, incredibly beautiful new ways of looking at the world.  In that moment of birth of a new idea, some chemical is released that makes us feel powerful, brilliant and connected to the grand scheme of the Universe.  The infant idea is flawless with nothing but pure potential radiating out from its innocent self.  It is a perfect, uncut gem pulsing with possibility ... until, of course, it hits the chill wind of reality.

Like any high, the euphoria of a new idea cannot last.  Suzanne and I are like dandelions whose fragile puffs produce hundreds of seeds that blow into the wind in an ecstatic dance of creativity.  The dance ends the dandelion's job; it has done its work well once it stands naked with its seeds all drifting on the wind.  

But our job doesn't end with the dance.  We have to pick a seed, plant it, tend it, watch it grow ... and realize that in spite of the fact that we thought the idea might be a giant oak or a prolific protea, it really has a nature all its own and all we can do is help it be the best dandelion it can be.  Our job is to bring forth the reality that exists in each idea.  It may not be the adrenalin rush of creation, but it is the day-by-day, satisfaction of parenting an idea to its best self.

Both of us have parented ideas to adulthood but both of us still crave the roller-coaster ride of birthing new ideas.  Thank god they aren't fattening!