The Magnetic Effect of Positive Action

Last week I was doing a painting of a waterfall up in Jewel basin (which I'm going to rework before I post). I was about 25 yards from the road, and there were a lot of trees and brush between the road and the rock I was perched on. The strangest thing happened. Somehow the passenger in a car that was barreling down the road caught a glimpse of my easel through all of that. The car backed up- in a really precarious spot- and she got out, leaning forward and peering through the trees at me like I might be some kind of wildlife. "You can come down here if you want," I laughed, and she did, even in flip-flops. "Are you a real artist?" she asked. I didn't answer because I wasn't sure. "Can I...can I look?" "Sure!" I said. "You'd better, now that you hiked all the way down here." I was as intrigued as she was. She wanted to take a picture of the painting. She wanted to take a picture of me with the painting. And then she wanted to tell me about the guy she knows back in California that's an artist. It was fun, but left me wondering what it was that made her want to come down in the first place. Was it just because I had an easel? She couldn't see my painting, or judge my skill level from the road. I thought back and remembered the time I saw someone laying bricks, and I stopped to see how he did it. And the time I found someone making a radio out of wires scavenged from a dump, and I bought it. Or the time I built a playhouse out of palette wood with my friend Jenee and several people driving by stopped their cars to talk to us for no apparent reason.

I'm thinking there's really something magnetic, something very attractive to people about positive action of any kind. It's amazing how whenever someone gets to work and creates something, builds something, does something innovative, or puts any kind of unique idea to good use, people are attracted to that. They want to see, they want to understand, and then often they even want to help. I love how that works because it seems to be the easiest way to make friends and build relationships... if you let them in on what you're doing, that is. All you have to do is think of how you can add value in goods or service to the people around you, and pretty soon everybody will show up to get in on it. This is so intriguing to me. For whatever reason it happens, I love it.