Blog - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™ | Innovation Keynote Speaker & Consultant

April 23, 2015

Summer

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Summer. Makes me think of long evenings playing on the street with the kids on my block growing up. Little red wagons — one of us would sit in the back and push with our feet, while the other steered the unwieldy handle around windy roads drawn with chalk on the asphalt.

We’d race around until after dusk, willing the sun to stay up just a little longer, so our moms wouldn’t call us in to set the table for dinner.

Eventually, though, our stomachs won out, and we’d head inside for tacos or homemade pizza. Then we’d get up and start all over again the next day.

April 22, 2015

Bullseye

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Every fall I help my synagogue lead services for Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).

These two holidays together are known as the High Holy Days, the holiest days on the Jewish calendar. The themes are similar in many ways to the civil New Year: starting afresh, new chances.

But the High Holy Days are also drenched in a strong undercurrent of forgiveness and repenting — or returning, which is what the Hebrew word that is translated as repenting actually means.

Returning to self. Returning to God. Returning to a true path.

There’s another central word in the High Holy Days canon that also has a different definition than the one usually assigned to it in English: cheit, which is usually translated as “sin.”

Such a heavy word, sin! But cheit is actually an archery term, not a moral term. It means “to miss,” as in to miss the target.

How liberating it is to think of our so-called sins in this way! We’re not bad people, we’re just human. Sometimes we miss.

And as any skilled archer knows, the way to hit the bullseye is to pick up your bow and try again.

April 21, 2015

Robin

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Years ago, while checking out the American Studies program at Brown University (back when I thought my life path was to be an academic), I stayed with my mom’s cousin Patti in Providence, Rhode Island.

Patti was fighting what would prove to be a losing battle with lung cancer at the time. She was practically bald, and thin as a bird. But her spirits were high — Patti had an indomitable spirit.

Signs of Spring were just peeking out, and the birds were just starting to return to the trees in her yard. I remember sitting in her kitchen as Patti ate some stew from the food archive that her team of friends and neighbors had been delivering.

“Listen to that,” she said. “The birds are finally coming back.”

Living in California, we have songbirds year round. I didn’t realize how very special that was until that moment — one of my last with Patti.

April 20, 2015

The Truth About Balance

When I was 23, I learned something about balance that I never forgot.

That was the year I taught 3- and 4-year olds at a nursery school in the Berkeley Hills.

I did not know back then that I was an artist. I did not know I was creative in the least. In fact, I thought I was the must uncreative person on the planet.

I was one of those people who, when talking to a professional creative, would say something like, “Oh, I’m not creative. I can’t even draw a straight line.”

(As if drawing a straight line has anything to do with creativity! WTF??)

But I digress. [Read more…]

April 20, 2015

Kite

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There’s a park near where I grew up, with a grassy hill where the wind never seems to stop blowing. We always called it Kite Hill, though I have no idea if that’s an official name or not.

In first grade, we made kites out of sticks and tissue paper. They didn’t fly particularly well. But in about fourth grade, there was a kite craze, with kite stores popping up everywhere. Special kites of all shapes and sizes. Special kite string. Picking out just the right kite was a serious project!

We’d pile in the car and trek out to Kite Hill to fly our treasures, feeling the wind tug and pull, trying to yank the roll of string out of our hands.

The funny thing was, if it succeeded, the kite would maybe blow off for a bit, but eventually it would flutter down to the ground. It was the anchor of the string, grounded to the earth in our hands, that allowed our kites to fly and swoop and dominate the sky.

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