dailydatewithgod

One of the ways that we keep growing as human beings are through new experiences. When we come across something that does not fit our template of known information or experience our brain has to find a way to either incorporate it or disregard it. However, the longer we live the more things are simply absorbed into the known or close enough to qualify as a known category that we do not experience as a novelty. God invites us to practice interrupting our default mode of categorization and creating novelty. When we pause and take a breath, we can look at someone or something again. We can ask ourselves, what is here that I have not seen before. We have the capacity before walking into a conversation with a familiar person to remind ourselves to listen more than we speak or let go of whatever fixed ideas we might have about the conversation’s outcome. Doing this opens up the eyes of our hearts to show us something our fixed mind may be blind to. We can grow from an interaction we might be dreading. We can be surprised by all the novelty that surrounds us when we allow ourselves to be creative with the familiar.