Mansi

The hardest instruction I gave four adults that morning at @sweetshoplosaltos was: “You decide when to stop.”

For the better part of an hour, I’d been telling them what to do: eyes open, eyes closed. One color, then another. Switch spots. Move the paper. Go faster. Go slower. Ten seconds are up!

There was barely time to think, let alone judge whether what they were making was any good.

Then, near the end, I told them they could do whatever they wanted and stop whenever it felt finished.

They looked up at me like: you can’t do this to us!

“But how do we know when to stop?” asked one woman.

“That is the hardest part,” said another.

Afterward, one of them said, “I loved how unstructured this experience was. So much of our life is structured. This was a welcome change.”

The funny thing is, I’d given them an extraordinary amount of structure. What I hadn’t given them was time to judge themselves. Or one another.

When we were done, they stayed another hour.

Four women who had only just met, sitting around a table, talking. An hour earlier, they’d been touching and altering one another’s work. Now they were getting to know the people behind those hands.

Nobody had asked them to stay. There was no more art to make, no activity to complete. They simply wanted to spend more time together.

I cut up their collective art into tokens: 74 opportunities for other people to feel seen.

On November 14, I’m bringing a small group together at Treehouse Silicon Valley for “The Shape of Me,” an invitation to explore who we are beyond the roles we play, through making and conversation.

No artistic experience necessary. Nothing to prove. And something tangible to take away.

If you’re local and curious, I’d love for you to join us. The link is in my bio.