There is always that age old phrase that the multiplication of love lives in the present rather than the past. Or rather, "don't live in the past." Certainly agreed that the multiplication love can certainly pass on from past to present and sometimes a multiplication is only realized and a seed only scattered when a past memory or experience is realized and cast towards the future. 

Not able to find a parking spot today on my way to the library, I decided I would just park a few blocks away and walk by the Cathedral of Learning on Pitt's campus. There were a beautiful amount of ginko leaves scattering the sidewalk likes wishes on asphalt, and I did my best to take in the people and the crispness of the air whilst heading to the library. However, while passing the Cathedral I had forgotten but then noticed again and art installation that many families were looking at entitled "Lest We Forget." This is an extraordinary photography project by Luigi Toscano. This man spent one year traveling to various parts of Europe to uncover hundreds of Holocaust survivors who would most likely tell their stories for the last time. 

And while looking at these images and reading these painful stories, I came upon a profound quote that I hope to share: "If we forget the past, we are condemned to repeat it." - Susan Cernyak-Spatz. I think this reminded me that although the purpose of this journey into whimsy has been to multiply love, it is so important to realize that sometimes the sprinkling of love requires a scattering of pain and memories that are to be brought around the world to remember times where multiplication was the opposite of love. Where seeds of hate were scattered like the lives of Jewish children and extended families who died at the hand of a scattering of evil "masked as whimsy." 

I think sometimes a multiplying of love occurs through a realization of pain and the importance of making sure that pain does not scatter again in the same way but rather provokes thoughtful contemplation and an answer to the question: Has the world actually challenged? What am I doing to understand the pain and multiply love from that pain. Because whimsy is not all rose-colored glasses but realistic optimism so that the right kind of seeds are spread moving forward. You cannot push past barriers in the name of love without first identifying the barriers and so that quest to spread whimsy while acknowledging the pain is perhaps more important that simply defining "whimsy" itself.