Good morning beautifl...

This spray painted greeting is sprawled across a driveway out the front of a local block of apartments.

Walking past, I couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like to be the recipient.
(Yes, technically, the paint is also vandalism - but bear with me for a moment).

Imagine waking up and then driving or walking out of your home, into the wider world, and being ‘spoken to’ like this before your day out there begins.
Imagine being wished well every morning.
Being supported.
Remembered.
Acknowledged.
Loved.
Imagine seeing – knowing – that you’re not alone in this world. That someone was thinking of you. That you matter. Perhaps even that you belong.

Amazing that such a small message can impart so much. Only two words, yet they’re potentially whispering many more.

So what about the beginnings of your own days?
What might you be whispering to yourself in the mornings, consciously or not, before you head out into the world?
When you first awake.
When you catch yourself in the mirror, cleaning your teeth.
When you pass the threshold of your front gate.
I wonder what just noticing these moments might reveal…

For instance, what tone do these words, these self-spoken messages, speak to you in?
Are they supportive, demanding, depressed?
How might that be impacting other parts of your day?

If you woke up tomorrow morning and found your ‘notes to self’ were sprayed across the street outside your home, would you find them uplifting (‘Good morning beautifl’) or offensive?
Would you be tempted to leave them there or scrub them out?
(And if they’re not fit for public consumption, how have they managed to make it onto your inner canvas?)

There’s an unwritten code amongst graffiti artists, apparently. If you can create something better than the existing stuff, you have the right (and possibly even an obligation) to paint over it and claim that bit of wall or whatever for something new.

So what about your inner spaces?

Is the stuff written inside a little dated? Are you sick of seeing it?
Do you want to add something / change something / paint over something / reclaim something?

And if you could paint your own morning greeting anew, what might it be?


(c) Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar 2010