Sally and Anne and you and I.

In the basket or the box? Careful: one answer
is much more empathetic than the other.
(source)

Although somewhat controversially used to determine autism spectrum tendencies, The Sally-Anne Test, developed in the 80s, measures children's cognitive functioning to help verify "theory of mind" and its key by-product: empathy. It determines if children can extend their thinking beyond that early egocentric childhood phase.

Sally and Anne were my first thoughts upon recently learning this word:

sonder (noun): the emotional realization inspired by the truth that all of the 7 billion people on this planet are living their own lives, each fraught with troubles and joys and ideas and dreams and darknesses similar yet different than mine or yours. 

For me, sonder is what I think I feel when I people-watch and wonder. It's what I think I feel when I ride the subway only remotely encountering and briefly interacting with strangers, silently seeing our worlds meet and part and meet and part again. It makes me feel small. It also inspires in me a longing for all the people and culture and stories and perspectives I will never live long enough to truly understand.

I love this word.

Sonder seems to me a solid reminder of how to be human. I know where Sally will look for her marble and thus I must respect all. In other words, I cannot fully know Sally or Anne or anyone but I do know the struggle itself. We are separate yet together, different yet the same.

Things that deserve the stink-eye:

cryptic vanity plates.

A cry for help? If so, from what...rush-hour? Or from where...the trunk?

Coming Soon...?

#idonotliketotravel
#igrowlwheniampissedoff
#igrowlalot
#thereforedonotholdyourbreath

to your house?

#happyEastertomorrow
#chocolatebunniesarebetter

?

Source.

Pictures have always spoken to me. I think in pictures. I tote pictures around in my head like carry-on luggage, I keep them close so they are safe. Because for me they whisper and yell and nudge and assault. In silence. I feel tethered to them. One of my favourite quotes is by artist Paul Klee: "a line is a dot that went for a walk." I feel that pull.

I stumbled upon this picture this morning and it is exactly how I feel today. So succinct. Exactly.

And I'm curious...what does it mean to you?

Things one should never outgrow:

games!

Ever played Scribblish? I highly recommend it.

Each player begins by choosing a caption (from a list) and writes it on the game piece. Game pieces are then randomly switched. Silently, that player then draws a picture to go with the caption. Once complete, more random switching occurs, then that player writes the new caption for that drawing (without seeing the original caption or previous drawing). More switching ensues then another player draws the picture for that caption and so on. After four drawings/captions, players look at the last drawing to guess which drawing belongs with their original caption. Hasbro explains it much better here.

There's a way to get points but the best part for us was unrolling the drawings to see how ideas were interpreted (misinterpreted) and images progressed (regressed).

Below's an example I found funny. The original caption is first but remember, as the game continues, the player did not see the previous interpretation.

Original caption &  first drawing:
Look! The banana learned how to pole vault!

Caption given by another player to this drawing:
My bacon rocked the track meet!

Caption given to the next drawing by another player:
 Bacon wins gold at the Pork Olympics!

And so on: Bacon places 1st overall, 
seriously kicking some snowman ass!

Things that deserve the stink eye?

This deserves the stink-eye. Literally.

I noticed this message scratched into a bathroom stall in Edmonton recently.

I don't usually reflect much on bathroom stall art but this didn't seem like the usual dubious-anatomy-with-a-phone-number-attached sort of thing commonplace to men's bathroom stalls. And plus I, uh, had to remain there for a while so....

Anyway, I can't decide if the graffiti artist
a. intended viewers to experience a peaceful zen-like moment hidden away in a quiet (?) bathroom far from the busy goings-on elsewhere or
b. intended viewers to, uh, more carefully attend to the typical pffft, plop, whiz, whoosh and other such public bathroom onomatopoeia or
c. is just an impulsive vandal or some sort of Banksy wannabe or
d. frick, I don't know (why can't I stop thinking all the time?!)

Or speaking of Banksy, maybe it has something to do with this?

Helicopter Ears

Meet Echo, aka Buns.

This is my daughter's rabbit. Something about her reminds me of Marge Simpson's sister Selma. I think if we gave her a pack of cigarettes she'd be a lot happier.

Buns has an extra chin she likes to wear under her chin. Sometimes she wants to be petted but she's a tad temperamental. Mostly she enjoys eating fashion magazines. How's that for an eating disorder Heidi Klum? 

Even though she has helicopter ears, she can't fly. Yet. We're teaching her. It's only a matter of time.

Happy Easter peeps.

The Weight Against the Door

Sometimes it seems to me that we forget we're alive. I do. I forget. It's so subtle. How does that happen? Familiarity breeds complacency I guess.

And yet, I'm not complacent. Not really. And I don't know anyone else who isn't struggling at times either.

I think of it this way. I grew up with older brothers. They shared a room, yet I had my own. Sometimes I had to keep one or the other (or both) from entering my room to do any or all of the things brothers sometimes so callously do to each other: steal, bully, intimidate.

But my room was my room, my safe zone. They weren't allowed. So I would bar the door with my weight on my side and one (or the other) would push from the outside. Eventually we would grow weary and then sit with our backs against each other, the door between us. Equally stubborn and competitive, neither wanted to be the first to surrender and thus that pressure, that strain against the door, that burden became familiar.

Bills. Family problems. Work stress. Uncertainty. Changes. These are the familiar burdens now. So we do what we can under the circumstances. We manage. We cope with the strain and eventually, it seems no wonder to me that we get so familiar with coping we may even forget why we're leaning so hard and maybe even what we're leaning against. It's just the cumulative weight of the world on the other side of the door. Like Atlas, we endure.

But this interferes with truly living.

And then something happens.

Might be good: suddenly the weight on the other side of the door shifts and there's an opening inside, we see anew. Might be bad: and we are forced to open the door ourselves.

Either way, I believe this opening is when we suddenly feel alive again, alive enough that we recognize the exertion, recognize the ache, recognize the opening.

And whether it's good or bad, isn't it ultimately still an opportunity? We can invite something into our lives or perhaps go somewhere we haven't gone before. Or sadly we could just choose to remain leaning into the weight against the door.

Wordfuse (Family Rodent Edition)

1. buninhibited (adjective): bunny + uninhibited = one free-from-her-cage bunny, unhampered, unrestricted, just chillaxing. Bunfettered? Bunflappable? See picture.

2. bunholy (adjective): bunny + unholy = one wicked-and-unreasonable bunny when she wants to be (growling, ninja type posturing, you-can't-stop-me stubbornness; when you rearrange the items in her cage she will wait patiently until you are done, then (Oh snap!) she puts them all back exactly where they were before. No picture available: I think she senses when to vamp it up for the photogs.

*To me, she resembles a rodent Rorschach test. What do you see?

Rorschach Test

On the roof of our farm house in Saskatchewan, I spent a lot of time looking at clouds when I was a kid. Still do. Yesterday I saw a cloud and it resembled Santa Claus wearing a bunny suit. He had turned his face away and looked a little sad. I knew how he felt. Clouds are my Rorschach test. What do you see in the clouds?