Seize your moments

From Beyond Social

When I heard about her and her project I became curious. I attended her lecture at Creative Mornings. It moved me to hear about her own experience that led her to become curious of other people’s beautiful moments and how she traveled all over the world. The project was called 'Seize your moments' and shows a very intimate side of people who once were strangers.

7,000 participants

Janne Willems doesn’t have a house to call it her home. Home is the sound of color pencils moving around in the pink box in her backpack. She is a collector. One of her hands holds pencils and the other blank postcards, as she walks up to people and asks if they want to draw a beautiful moment from last week. She has found more than 7000 beautiful moments in the last five year while travelling to 26 countries.

In 2001 she moved from Limburg to Utrecht to study. Before the move, she felt like an outsider but now she feels home amongst her peers. She starts to enjoy more and more moments, like the hawks flying above her head when she bikes home. More and more moments end up in her fun-things-book. Unpleasant moments don’t have to be noted down and her pile of books grows.

The moment her mom is diagnosed as terminally ill, she starts writing and drawing three books full of beautiful moments. Most of these moments were collected 5 weeks later when her mother got cremated. There were so many lovely people. From then on this became a routine for her. A few years later she realizes how much a difference this makes. Beautiful moments strengthen you during hard times. She wants to share this. A website gets build for her and she posts one beautiful moment a day. Janne takes the train every day and she asks other travelers if they want to draw a moment. On the third day, a boy quickly hands her his drawing and disappears amongst the crowd. Janne yells "thank you", looks at his drawing and starts crying. He shared something very intimate.

Janne Willems, Seize your moments, page 10

Impact

Sometimes strangers start talking to each other while drawing. Sometimes people don’t know what to draw, they can’t remember anything. That’s when Janne helps them by asking questions like "when was your last smile"? Meeting Janne on the train could be their most beautiful moment of the week.

Janne Willems, Seize your moments, page 10

From her own need to capture beautiful moments to make her days richer she has started to create a possibility for others to experience this. She creates connection between strangers. When a person starts sharing a positive experience in a public space and starts smiling, the atmosphere of the public space changes. Janne realizes only the person who experiences moments, whether they were hilarious, scary, sad or aggressive, can decide how they see them. Everything can be a beautiful moment. She respects the space and boundaries of people. When they are drawing, she creates some distance so the participant gets time and space to go back and experience their moment. When someone doesn’t want to participate, she respects it. She doesn’t see this as a rejection. After all she is asking something and the only thing she needs is an answer and there are no wrong answers. This is such an inspiring thing to see and learn from for me. How often do we feel hurt when someone says no? How peaceful is it to be who you are and notice you are ok?

Another thing Janne is skilled at is learning from trial and error and taking big jumps. When she had collected 4000 drawings in the Netherlands she started to feel less challenged. Her friend sarcastically suggested to travel all over the world as an answer to a midlife crisis. After a while she did and quit her job and terminated the lease of her house later. She got a lot of help from family and friends and some people donated money. She quickly learns about hardships of speaking different languages and the importance of learning about other cultures and customs. One example is the reaction she gets when she uses the word ‘’help’’. In the Netherlands people are eager to help but in some countries, they associate this with homeless people asking for money. She also likes to walk around with her box of pencils and postcards, this creates curiosity. In Servia, Belgrade she hides the postcards because there are a lot of street vendors with a bad reputation. There also is a moment when she discovers she is becoming more and more focused on results and quantity. This makes her less authentic towards people. They notice it and less and less people want to participate. She needed to take a step back and reflect. Is she still willing to be curious and to really listen to others?

The value of the project

There was a moment when she started to doubt herself, sitting at a terrace in Slovenia. Is her project useful enough? She has been receiving a lot help from people. They offer her a place to sleep, share their meal and give her money. Is she giving them something valuable back? Someone asked her whether the interaction comes from both sides. Is it mostly Janne who gets happier with this project? Deep from inside she knows everything is in balance but she still can’t tap into it at the moment. While thinking about this someone sits beside her, Meri. She has a store in the neighbor and this terrace is her favorite spot. Her arm is plastered but she still wants to draw. When Meri finishes, she gives Janne ten euro and tells her it’s for lunch tomorrow. She says it’s important what Janne does and leaves. The only one who decides whether Janne is giving back something worthy is the one who draws.

Besides sharing her experiences and her project through lectures she has written a book with lots of stories and pictures and drawings. At the end of the books she explains how we can become happier with the beautiful moments we have. She also gives advice about things like when to start drawing and how to recall moments and how to share. Janne categorized the subjects of the drawings and what percentage chose this and what differences there are between different countries. There are two postcards included to draw on and to send to her. She also has a website where you can find drawings and information, updates, events, e-course and more. She’s one person but she reaches out to thousands of people. All of us can act and find happiness in our daily lives. From her I learn there is no formula and right or wrong. I feel lighter, more hopeful and trusting of everything around us seeing her perspective.

Sources