For decades, the stuff in my jewelry box was demure and understated. Except for a three huge “dinner rings” sporting gaudy glass stones: gifts from a dear friend kept for sentimental value.  They lived in the basement of my jewelry box.

They have come out of hiding; they sit front and center in my jewelry box. With them are some “newbies” on the block: chunky, gaudy and cheap necklaces. Every morning, I don a necklace and a ring. Even when I dress in garden grunge, the jewelry is there.

These “gauds” support my efforts to “mind-shift” into a different version of me. Yeah! yeah! My mother, my aunts, my teachers, my sister all told me “be yourself.” I am fed up with that business. I tried it for 75 years and I am tired of “being myself.” Would you believe I think the same thoughts in exact same sequence every single morning while brushing my teeth? What am I thinking about? Living a year in Spain? Pony trekking in Iceland? Hell no, I think about an insignicant event with a coworker. It was an incident free of trauma and fleeting interest.

Time to teach this old dog new tricks. Now every morning, I fasten a gaudy necklace around my neck and slide on a gaudy glass ring. Then I sit down with the morning cup of very strong coffee and my journal, and I practice thinking new thoughts. This morning, I listened to a scientist speculating that the “world we know” is limited to the nature of our senses. If we had a different set of senses, our experience of the world around would be different beyond our comprehension. Imagine seeing your world in a five-hundred shades of red!

How would my teenage years felt if I had spent time thinking new thoughts, ones that had nothing whatsoever to do with the conflict between my parents?

Some say that imagination is the most powerful force in the universe.  Did you know that Einstein is quoted as saying “If you want to have intelligent children, read them fairy tales; if you want to have more intelligent children read them more fairy tales.”

Going to go read a fairy tale now and get smarter.