I went to the woods to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life … so that when it comes time to die, I will not discover I have not lived. Living is so dear.*
Henry David Thoreau

The imagination is not what you play with, the imagination plays with you. It has the power both to create and destroy, in form and deform.**
Mary Ruefle

If you have found your “woods,”
And you dwell there more than not,
You are blessed.

It is a demanding place,
Where curiosity and imagination are honed,
Activeness too,
Forcing growth:

I profoundly believe that we don’t grow into creativity; we grow out of it.^

If there is no growth then we may still need to find our “woods.”
Comfortable can become deleterious,
Even toxic:

Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what is called for is a little discomfort? … Choose uncomfortable enlargement over comfortable diminishment whenever you can.^^

Exploring the “woods” of others can be a place to begin,
Or to begin again.

*Henry David Thoreau, quoted in Mary Ruth Broz and Barbara Flynn’s Midwives of an Unnamed Future;
**From Mary Ruefle’s On Imagination;
^From Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds;
^^From Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks.