Loopholes

It’s time to start dreaming again. I’ve been away from this project for a long time. In part, I got a new job and… jobs aren’t always dreamy. But also fall was rough (also not dreamy!) and the pace of life in New England feels like a marathon and a sprint simultaneously. Eeeee! Anyway, things have finally slowed down, which has opened a bit more space for dreaming. This “opening,” the quality of something emerging in time much like a portal, got me thinking of loopholes.

I just finished reading Other People’s Words. It’s a beautiful and gorgeously written book that’s kind of like a love letter to friendship. More precisely it’s about friendship and language—or maybe the language of friendship. In the book, the author, Lissa Soep talks about loopholes. If we’re paying attention, Lissa says that language (and the voices of others) can propel us towards new possibilities. And these new possibilities are like loopholes that “open up when you exit the boundaries of your fixed reality and see the world anew” (p. 59). I love this idea and have been thinking about it a lot. What would it mean to look for these loopholes, rather than wait for them to find you? In other words, what if these loopholes don’t open, but need to be opened by us. This feels a lot like developing a dream muscle.