I’ve never been one for calm and patience. My attention span is so pathetically short that I lost a pen three times when a friend challenged me to keep track of it for five minutes last summer. Likewise, my constant need to fidget or do something with my hands has been known to irk people in many a conversation. In a way, though, my restlessness has been a blessing, shaping many of my decisions and pursuits throughout my life.
At some point in my childhood I developed a fascination with anything “Asian”—likely inspired by the movies “Big Bird Goes to Japan/China”. Eventually this led me to read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. After reading it and falling in love with the inspirational tragedy, I decided that I wanted to be Sadako (I suppose I didn’t put much thought into the Leukemia part). However, since I wasn’t “Asian” and couldn’t change my name to “Sadako”, the best I could do was learn to fold paper. This was a pretty awesome hobby to take up as it gave my fidgety hands something to do when, for example, I was waiting in a restaurant or wanted to make something out of the gold Ferrero Rocher chocolate wrappings.
To make a long story short, after more than a decade of folding paper, several page-a-day origami calendars, and many boxes of creations, I realized two things. As I had gotten older, I had learned to fold more complex origami. A natural progression, for sure, but the amazing thing about it is that for many years I would simply give up on the origami I couldn’t figure out or get distracted and move onto another origami before finishing the previous one. Restless, fidgety me had learned some patience. Shocking.
After that introspective revelation, I became aware of something else. Or rather, the internet became widely available. Origami is flippin’ badass. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to go YEARS without realizing that origami was so much more than all the flowers, birds, bugs, and boats I was making.
Some of the creations people have made are absolutely astounding. (And some of the masters even use math to create complex designs. Go figure...although I guess it’s not that surprising.)
Examples!
While I did not develop enough patience to attempt some of the examples above, I did find out that there were some pretty awesome creations I could make.
And in another effort to assert my nerdy side, I present to you my latest origami collection:
The Star Wars
0 comments