What’s Your Window?

When I look out of my office window, I see an old red shed and a garden with its first flush of green. Beyond that is a kite-flying field where a helicopter once landed – out of the blue.

Unless you’re presently serving time in an office cubicle or the state pen, I’m pretty sure you have a window, too. Take a gander out of yours. What do you see? I bet I know…

Stories…

Poems…

Paintings…

And musical compositions!

Any time you need a super-fast jump-start on any artistic endeavor, just remember that glassy gap in the wall.

No window?

No worries! There’s a figurative window, too. And you always have that one, no matter where you roam.

Part of its view is often occupational.

As a writer, I typically see ideas for articles, stories, or poems out of this little porthole of mine – regardless of the scenery. But I didn’t always have this view.

Back when I was a neuropsychology intern, I used a much different sort of window. When I viewed the world through that pane, I saw…

Brain damage!

Yep, I could be looking at a tree, a piano, or a house cat, but trust me, it had impairment potential. My coworkers and I often joked that it was a miracle we could even get through our days unscathed – walking around in the world as we did, without wearing helmets or being fully encased in bubble wrap.

Of course, we were all pretty sleep-deprived.

Meanwhile, the psychiatry residents were “catching” every mental illness through their occupational windows. And one nurse on the burn unit refused to use a stove... “It’s not dinner, if it’s not microwavable!” She would say with a fist pump.

Of course, my fellow interns and I didn’t pipe up about all of the brain-damaging chemicals that are potentially released via microwave cookery.

Anyway, occupational or otherwise, it should be no big surprise that the figurative window you look out through, determines your outlook on life.

Here are a couple of examples from literature…

 “Good morning, Pooh Bear,” said Eeyore gloomily. “If it is a good morning,” he said. “Which I doubt.”

Yet here’s a different window in the very same house –

“The sky is perfect blue. The clouds are perfect, too. And here I am with you! What could be more right?” sang Winnie the Pooh.

Ah, poor Eeyore – forever suffering…

from a wee bit of window “pain”.

PROMPT: What’s outside your window? This is a great place to start a bit of art. Then try somebody else’s view for a change. How do farmers see the world? Astronauts? Slugs? What does that garden see, when it looks back at me? Hmmm….