Plus

I was watching CNBC last night, a documentary called Walt: The Man Behind the Myth, when I heard a term I’ve heard before, but which, during this two otherwise vacant hours resonated with me as it hadn’t before. You Disneyphiles know it. I’m sure you can hear Walt’s warm Midwestern twang uttering it as you read this- “Plus it.” For the uninitiated “plussing” refers to tweaking or adding to an idea, a project, a gag, a piece of art until it is more than you originally conceived it could be- to make something better as opposed to settling for good enough.

As I say, I’m not unfamiliar with the term and while I was watching the show, marveling, really at the inventiveness, the fearlessness, the almost intuitive genius of Walt Disney, the repetition throughout of his special way of asking for more seemed to my suggestion-prone mind to be an edict directed at me.

There you have it. I am so far gone I think I’m receiving messages via bio-docs about deceased entrepreneurs. And what’s wrong with that? You have to take inspiration from wherever it may come.

Anyway, I’m watching and I’m emotional knowing how the story ends and my brain is ticking away, grappling with the mundanity (yes, it’s a real word) of my current situation and I can’t help but ask myself- How can you “plus” your life?

This is not a new question for me, or indeed for many people I know, but the amended phrasing somehow feels as though it might help me gain focus and come at the issue from a different tack. “Plussing” sounds much more creative than “changing“, doesn’t it?

I suppose you infer from my complaining that I have the dullest life imaginable. Not so. I travel, I spend a fair amount of time with people I love and esteem, I’ve volunteered, I work, I plan, I live, yet something is missing. I’ve lost wonder, I think, or rather the ability to find it and share it.

There’s a journey I need to make it seems, to find the thing that eludes me or at least to name it and learn its substitute if I’m not allowed to keep it for my own. Therefore, without a set plan, but with dangerous good intentions and instead of sleeping through the alarm that’s droned on so long my brain has numbed to it’s infernal buzzing, I’m taking action, putting out that first step Lao Tzu went on about. I’m going to try to find the “plus”.

I’m starting with small things, things without that debilitating word “change” attached, things that make me feel I’m progressing in a direction- any direction at all instead of standing still. Last night for instance, I “plussed” my fingernails. They are now a glossy taupe/gray. Tomorrow night I may take in a movie with my bestie(On a school night, by George!) thereby "plussing" a Wednesday night. I know, I'm horribly adulterating the term, but whatever it takes, people! No judgments, please.