The power of pretending

Put pretending to good use. It is the power we employed as children to fathom the world. Use the power of pretending now as an adult to open your heart.

While walking alone on a trail, pretend that every plant you pass tells you what it can do for you. Totally pretend! You pass a weed and let your imagination jump to the idea that it would be excellent in soup. See an oak and hear the tree say that it’s good for tanning leather. A grass “says” it would keep you warm as insulation.

Let it be that within half a second of your consideration of any plant, you “know” what it can do, without bothering about how it is impossible for you to know. Let it not be a big deal, nor a surprise. Avoid any critique of how silly this is. Just let it happen that you “make up things” about plants.

In between listening to the plants, when you look at the limestone you’re climbing on, let yourself hear its story of being the bottom of an inland sea, how it was pushed slowly upward and fell down a slope to where you are. Let it be that you hear things about your world, and that you believe what you hear.

This is pretending, and this is how you become able to do what humans can do. What once has been done, can be done again.