I Like That About It, and I Hope You Do Too

This morning, while I was writing the Chrysocolla entry for the Crystal A–Z Encyclopaedia, I found myself pondering my writing style.

This is not particularly unusual. I am quite capable of beginning with the chemical composition of a mineral and somehow finding myself halfway through a philosophical discussion about humanity, connection and the meaning of life. My mind rarely travels in a straight line. It prefers the scenic route, with several unexpected detours and the occasional stop because something shiny caught its attention.

There you go again, Magpie.

The thought began with the final sentence of the Chrysocolla entry. I had written, “I like that about it.”

I read it back and immediately thought, That does not sound like me.

There was nothing technically wrong with the sentence, but it felt incomplete. It sounded as though I had closed the conversation before inviting anyone else into it. What I really wanted to say was, “I like that about it, and I hope you do too.”

Four little words completely changed the feeling of the sentence.

Suddenly, I was no longer simply recording my own opinion about Chrysocolla. I was speaking to someone. I was inviting another person to look more closely, consider what I had shared and perhaps find something within it that resonated with them.

It made me stop and ask myself who I am actually writing for.

Am I writing all of this for myself? If I am, why am I building a website, creating an encyclopaedia and sharing these thoughts publicly? I could keep them in one of my many journals or allow them to remain among the large number of filing drawers that seem to be permanently open inside my mind.

I should explain that this particular revelation arrived during a very ordinary and slightly chaotic morning. I had already been awake for three hours. I was getting my son onto the school bus while thinking that I really should eat some breakfast. My coffee had gone cold, naturally. I needed to remember to fold the washing. I wondered how my husband was getting on with his team as they began their day. I was debating whether to water the garden or place a perhaps unreasonable amount of faith in the Bureau of Meteorology and its promise of rain.

At the same time, I was feeling guilty because I had not done enough work on the website or the business. There is a very long list of crystals, minerals and fossils I want to write about. When I say long, I mean long, long, long. There is always another specimen to research, another history to explore, another scientific detail to understand and another traditional association to investigate.

This is how my brain works. There are a million thoughts wandering through it at any given moment, often without adult supervision.

Writing helps me organise some of those thoughts. It gives them somewhere solid to exist instead of allowing them to continue circling around in my head. It is one of the ways I counsel myself, understand myself and sometimes heal parts of myself. Whether I am writing with words or working in a mixed-media journal, the creative act helps me take something intangible and give it form.

Writing for ourselves has enormous value. Private writing does not need an audience to have a purpose. However, the writing I create for Enchantress Collective was never intended to be a private notebook. The Collective was created because I wanted to build a community of people who enjoy discovering new things and sharing what they learn along the way.

I want to explore the Earth and the cosmos, stones and their stories, histories and cultures, creativity and spirituality, the mystical, the practical and the wonderfully whimsical. I want to explore the deeper aspects of who we are, how each of us is entirely unique and yet how often we discover that we are not so different after all.

Most of all, I want us to learn from one another.

Learning and Teaching at the Same Time

I do not know everything. One person simply cannot hold all the information that exists, and even if we somehow managed it, life would continue evolving and the cosmos would continue expanding while we were busy congratulating ourselves.

There would already be something new to learn.

I hope I never reach a point where I believe I know everything. What a terribly dull place that would be. Curiosity has been part of me for as long as I can remember, and I hope it never changes. I can hear someone mention a subject I know very little about and immediately want to go away and research it. One question leads to another, which leads to something seemingly unrelated, and before long I have seventeen tabs open and have forgotten why I originally picked up my phone.

The more we learn, the more we become aware of how much there is still to discover.

That is not something to be embarrassed about. It is exciting.

Knowledge is also not a possession that becomes less valuable when it is shared. It does not need to be guarded by people who have decided that knowing something makes them more important than those who are still learning it. Every knowledgeable person was once a beginner. Every expert once asked a question they did not know the answer to.

We should be able to say, “I don’t know,” without shame. We should also be able to say, “I know something about that; would you like me to share it with you?” without turning the conversation into a lecture.

Teaching and learning are not always separate roles. Very often, we are doing both at the same time.

When we explain something to another person, we are required to think about what we know, how we came to know it and whether we truly understand it. Their questions may reveal something we had never considered. Their experience may add another layer to the subject. They may disagree with our interpretation or offer an entirely different perspective. That does not have to threaten what we know. It can expand it.

I may share thirty-five years of experience with crystals, minerals, gemstones, jewellery and the stories connected with them, but the person reading may recognise something in those words that I have never seen. They bring their own history, knowledge and understanding to the conversation. I teach something; they teach something; and somewhere in the exchange, we both learn.

That is what I want the Collective to become.

What Chrysocolla Understands About Company

Perhaps it was particularly fitting that Chrysocolla prompted this train of thought.

One of the things I like about Chrysocolla is its variability. It is not always the same colour, pattern, texture or formation. Its appearance can change considerably, and its durability can also depend upon the other minerals with which it has formed. In some circumstances it can be quite fragile, while in the company of other minerals it may become much more robust.

I like that about it, and I hope you do too.

I also hope some people will read between those lines.

Human beings can be rather like that. We are individuals, but we do not develop in isolation. The people around us, the places we inhabit, the experiences we endure and the communities in which we participate all affect us. Some relationships may leave us feeling more fragile. Others help us recognise our strength. The right people do not make us less individual; they provide an environment in which we can become more fully ourselves.

That does not mean we must surround ourselves only with people who think exactly as we do. Where would be the fun or learning in that?

I have never wanted to create a community in which everyone agrees. I want a community in which people can disagree with kindness, ask questions without feeling foolish and share their knowledge without becoming preachy. I want people to feel safe enough to explore an idea and equally safe enough to decide that it does not resonate with them.

Every person has their own truth, shaped by their experiences and understanding. We are allowed to protect and share our truth, but we must also make room for the possibility that another person’s truth will not look the same. That difference does not need to be a battle. It can be an opportunity to listen, understand and learn something we could not have discovered from our own perspective alone.

To me, that is part of grace.

Grace is kindness toward other people, the creatures with whom we share this world, the environment and ourselves. It is allowing space to feel, breathe, think and take things apart so we can understand them properly. It is accepting that something does not need to be perfect to have value and that we do not need to be perfect before we are allowed to participate.

Why I Keep Inviting You Along

I have realised that I am always inviting people to come on a journey with me.

I am perfectly capable of being alone and often enjoy my own company, but I do not want to hoard my discoveries or have every adventure by myself. When I find something fascinating, beautiful, funny, moving or completely unexpected, my instinct is to turn to someone and say, “Look at this.”

Perhaps that instinct began in childhood.

My father left when I was very young, and for a long time I carried the feeling that I was not enough. We struggled financially. We had hand-me-downs and the basics, and I was neither popular nor surrounded by friends at school.

Yet I was also blessed in ways many people could not see. I had my mother, my brother and my grandparents, and I lived on a magical block of land filled with Australian bush, native animals, cliffs, caves, a river and a creek.

Magic was not something that existed only in stories. It was light catching the drops of dew on a spiderweb. It was hidden in the landscape, in changing seasons and in all the small details many people walked past without noticing.

I still see magic in small things. It is in the rather strange wonder of taking a runny egg, placing it in boiling water and making it solid. It is in watching my son discover or learn something new. It is in celebrating the changing seasons with perhaps more enthusiasm than is strictly necessary. It is in giving someone a gift chosen especially for them. It is in the kind word or gesture that reaches a person during a dark moment and helps them find their way towards hope.

Magic is often simply the moment when we notice that something matters.

Stories help us notice.

When we share our stories, we give other people an opportunity to recognise a piece of themselves within them. The circumstances may not be identical, but the feeling may be familiar. Someone else may understand the loneliness, the curiosity, the grief, the delight, the distraction, the cold coffee or the experience of having far too many mental filing drawers open at once.

Through that recognition, neither person is quite so alone.

This is why I want my writing to contain more than information. Facts matter deeply to me. I want them to be researched, honest and clearly distinguished from tradition, belief or personal interpretation. But facts are not the only way human beings learn. We also learn through stories, humour, memories, mistakes and those moments when we finally understand something that has apparently been waving its arms in front of us for years.

Sometimes the lesson arrives with great dignity and wisdom.

Sometimes it arrives while your coffee is cold, the washing is waiting and you are wondering whether it is going to rain.

Keeping the Door Open

The sentence “I like that about it” stated what I thought.

Adding “and I hope you do too” opened the door.

It did not demand that the reader agree with me. It simply welcomed them into the thought. They might like the same quality for an entirely different reason. They might see themselves reflected in the Chrysocolla. They might begin thinking about the people with whom they have formed and grown. They might become curious about minerals, relationships, resilience or something I have not considered at all.

They might even teach me something in return.

That is the point.

I do not want to stand at the front of a room guarding a collection of answers. I want us to gather around the questions. I want people who know a great deal to feel welcome and people who are encountering a subject for the first time to feel equally welcome. I want the person who loves scientific explanations to sit beside the person drawn to spiritual meaning, while the artist notices the colours and the collector peers closely at the formation.

Each person will see something different because each person brings something different.

If I share what I know and you share what you know, neither of us loses anything. We both leave with more than we brought.

So yes, I like that about Chrysocolla.

I like that it is individual and variable. I like that it can be fragile or robust depending upon the company it keeps. I like that a mineral can begin a conversation about curiosity, community, resilience, writing, childhood, cold coffee and the impossibility of trusting a weather forecast.

Most of all, I like that there is still so much for all of us to learn.

And I hope you do too.