Is this allowed to be lovely?

I have been trying to make life lighter and somehow given the project a clipboard.

It starts innocently enough. An interesting conversation. A possibility. A few people enjoying themselves. Then I see what it could become, who it might help, how it could spread. Before long, we are designing a movement and nobody has ordered another coffee.

I enjoy this part. Seeing possibilities is one of my favourite things. But occasionally I wonder whether I would want to spend an afternoon inside the future I am designing. Would there be room to mess about, or would someone ask what the messing about was in service of?

Having spent quite a lot of my life thinking about purpose, I find this an awkward question. Purpose has brought me direction, friendship and adventures I could never have planned. It has also become rather keen on inspecting everything at the door.

Can a conversation just wander? Can I make something because it delights me? Can an afternoon be lovely without becoming evidence of personal growth? Even as I write this, part of me wants to explain how play improves creativity. Apparently, I am still preparing a business case for enjoying myself.

Now we have tools that can give us hours back, which is extraordinary. I can also use them to generate enough new possibilities to occupy the next fourteen years. An empty afternoon barely stands a chance.

There are responsibilities, of course. Bills and people and difficult things that need doing. But I suspect I have been adding a condition of my own: I can properly enjoy being here once I have sorted everything out. Given my talent for discovering more things to sort out, this could take a while.

I would like a little more ridiculousness while things are unfinished. Beauty that doesn’t need to be useful. Another coffee before we accidentally found an organisation.

I am still interested in changing the world. I would just like to enjoy its company while I’m here.