The Magic of Animated Living

“I see history as a book with many pages, and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning.  The new breeze blows, a page turns, the story unfolds.” – George H. W. Bush

The Magic of Animated Living

From the moment of my arrival it was like being transported into a magical kingdom.  You’ve likely been there too.  Do you remember the flower portrait at the gate, the magical image of a mouse, living in the form of vibrantly colored flowers greeting you at its very gate?  I remember it vividly, at the entrance to a real, yet carefully crafted Main Street experience.  Its combined pieces make up a fond childhood memory.  Yet, one piece, one component, was the most transforming discovery of my first trip there, a simple “animation flipbook.”

You see, I walked into one of the little shops, on that same main street, and found a small, paper animation flipbook, curiosity.  You’ve likely seen one yourself.  It is a low tech, entertaining introduction to the magic of animation and discovering it allowed me to begin to understand the principle and art of “Story Revelation.”  I say “principle and art” because to live a great, meaningful and hopeful life one must combine the two, step by step, over time.

The creation of a flipbook takes place by imagining a sequence of actions as an outcome and then breaking down its whole into definable, individual steps or drawings.  You can try this out for yourself with a pad of “sticky notes.”  Start on the last, bottom, page and simply draw a small ball in the lower right-hand corner.  Then, allow the next sheet of paper to cover the first one, so you can see the ball, you drew, through the top paper.  Next, draw a new, slightly larger, ball next to the one you can see through the lay-over sheet of paper.  Continue this process across and up sequential sheets until you have created the whole.  Once you’re finished you can simply use your thumb to flip through the pages, which will allow you to see the ball grow in size, while moving across the pages of the book.  Notice that you can only see the whole story by allowing the individual pages to work together through a process of Story Revelation?  Now, begin to interpret the story of your real life by using this transformative process.

The story of who a person is, can’t be told by looking at one minute, hour, day, month or even one or more years individually.  We are all animating our lives through the art of creating it one moment at a time.  We create a great, meaningful and hopeful life by combining the actions of our minutes, hours, days, months and years toward its whole.  And, we can decide what takes place on each page of our story right up until its end.

From the moment of our birth it’s like being transported into a magical kingdom.  You’ve likely begun to discover this too.  Do you remember the hopes and dreams you started with out of the gate, the magical image of a successful life, living in the form of vibrantly visions greeting you at its very beginning?  I’m sure you remember it vividly, all the hope and zeal you felt at a very young age. 

Then, as now, you and I are carefully crafting the life of our dreams with each new, unsure and exciting step forward.  Life’s combined pages make up our whole.  And, there are more pieces, more components, yet to be completed in animation flipbook we all call life.

What will be the result of your Story Revelation?