We Are All Successful Alchemists
- Marlane Ainsworth
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
We can turn lead into gold every day
When most of us hear the term alchemist we imagine a secret room where a robed figure stirs a fiery liquid in a crucible above an intense flame in an attempt to turn lead into gold.
The idea of being able to turn a metal like lead into gold seems worth pursuing even today. Currently the price of lead is US$0.06 per troy ounce whereas gold is US$4,000 per troy ounce. (A troy ounce is a specific weight used for pricing metals and is heavier than the standard ounce.)
Of course, alchemy has a longer and more comprehensive history than the spooky image described above, but today I’d like to take this common impression we have about what alchemists did and relate it to our daily lives.
Few of us have access to a secret room, a robe, a lump of lead, a crucible and an intense flame, but we do have direct access to what is happening to us right now.
So, what is happening in my life today that could fall into the category of lead (not worth much), and how can I turn those happenings into gold (worth a lot)?
Three lead events today:
Telstra notified me that they are working in my area so I can expect serious interruptions to internet services.
I went into the garden to take a photo to use for this blog and nothing appropriate caught my eye.
Several phone calls to a Bunnings department went unanswered.
How can I turn these events into gold?
What will help is how I respond to them.
The way I respond to these events decides the outcome.
What I do, feel or think about them determines whether they stay as lead or become gold.
Telstra limiting my access to the internet forced me to turn to the old-fashioned way of accessing knowledge. It’s called Reading a Book. So today I turned to my bookshelf and found a lot of gold – books I’d bought or borrowed and hadn’t finished reading. What a goldmine!
When I went into the garden, I didn’t find the perfect photo, but I did find a variegated-leaf nasturtium spilling over a raised bed and watched bees busy amongst purple salvia flower stems. Then I stood for several minutes watching a pair of swans dipping their beaks into the winter lake in search of roots. When they lifted their beaks skyward, sunlight turned the droplets falling back into the water into diamonds.
Bunnings ignoring my phone calls led me to pick a moment when the internet was working to go online and use a system called Click & Collect. Within minutes I’d ordered and paid for a 4L tin of Wattyl Pale Eucalypt Low Sheen paint, without the need of a human voice at the end of a phone line (although I must admit a human voice is a very nice thing). I now know how to use an online ordering system I’ve shied away from.
So, this could have been a day of lead, but it turned out to be a day of gold.
We Are All Alchemists
The alchemical secret to finding gold instead of lead in your life is to see or sense what else is happening around, or within, or as a result of, an event.
Every moment holds potential gold.
Sometimes we must look hard, but the gold is there.
We are all alchemists.
With love, Marlane