Are you ready to meditate with Corey?
Lay down in your bed,
Make sure that everything is just right in your room,
Close your eyes if you want to,
So that you can relax your body and let go of your busy,
Busy day.
Jack was in the bathtub.
He'd been painting all sorts of different things,
With his magical paint pens that his grandma got him for Christmas a while ago now.
Even though Jack wished everything that he painted on the bathroom wall would stay alive,
Stay real,
He kind of got used to the idea of painting something,
It popping off the wall,
Being there in front of him as real as day,
Just for a few seconds,
And then falling into the water below,
Dispersing into all different colors into the bathtub.
By now his bath water was like a muddy brown color.
Everything that he'd painted had done exactly what it always did.
It came to life.
It was real for just a few seconds,
And then it fell into the water.
Hence,
The water in the tub was a pretty gross color.
All colors mixed together always seemed to make brown,
Or some sludgy gray color.
Jack was just laid back in the tub,
Thinking about what he could paint next.
He wanted to go on holiday.
It had been snowing all winter where he lived,
And he was craving the sunshine.
His ideal holiday would be a beach holiday.
One of those where you just go to the beach every day,
You sunbathe,
You play in the ocean,
You play on the sand,
And that's about it.
He liked those kind of vacations because he always seemed to meet lots of new friends.
It was like he would meet new families and new people every time he and his parents would go to the beach.
So in a ways,
He liked to see it as a different vacation every day,
Because you never knew who you were going to meet and what kind of fun you were going to have.
And even the days where no one was on the beach,
And it was just him and his mom and his dad,
He always had a good time.
He liked to create things in the sand.
He liked to pretend he was in sandcastle competitions.
And because Jack could be really artistic,
He made really good creations in the sand.
So he was thinking about that in his warm bath water,
Staring at the blank screen that he could paint on.
He decided he was going to paint one of those blow up beds a lilo.
He was going to make it bright orange.
He was going to paint it with the ocean and the sky and the sun,
Like a full beach scene as quickly as he possibly could.
One thing that Jack had been doing lately is painting with two hands.
Jack had been born right handed,
But he'd been practicing painting with his left hand also.
He'd learned that if you could use both your left hand and your right hand,
That was called ambidextrous.
He thought that was a really cool word.
He wanted to be ambidextrous.
So Jack picked up two paintbrushes.
He stood up in the bathtub and started to frantically paint his bright orange lilo,
Full sized,
As big as he possibly could,
Like he actually reached from one side of the bathtub to the other.
He painted the sand,
The ocean,
The sky.
He even painted a little bird flying in the sky.
And then he stood there and waited.
The lilo seemed to go from 2D and flat to 3D and come off the wall.
Jack decided to quickly jump on the lilo.
He landed on it perfectly.
It was soft,
Just like a lilo is,
Just like any blow up bed is.
It was soft and squeaky and the sound made him laugh because it actually squeaked like a real lilo,
Like it squeaked and he wobbled around on it trying to get his balance.
And then it landed in the bathtub,
But it didn't,
Didn't,
Didn't disappear.
He was floating in the bath water on his bright orange lilo.
And as he looked around,
The walls,
The mirrors,
The taps,
Everything about his bathroom seemed to just kind of fade into a fuzzy look in his mind.
And instead he could see the beach.
He could hear the waves crashing on the sand.
He could smell the ocean.
He closed his eyes and moved his body around just a little bit to get more comfortable on his squeaky bright orange lilo.
He listened to the waves.
He could even feel the sun on his skin.
He could smell sun cream,
Like he'd actually put sun cream on that morning or something.
He always loved the smell of sun cream and sun spray.
It reminded him of his holidays.
He liked the one that smelled like coconut the best.
There were so many memories to that smell.
Sometimes in the middle of winter or when he'd feel like he hadn't been on holiday for the longest,
Longest time,
He would just get out the sun lotion and smell it.
And it would instantly take him to this place on holiday.
And then that would make him think of watermelon.
And then that would make him think of flip-flops.
He never wore flip-flops unless he was on vacation.
And then that would make him think of all his favorite vacation clothes,
His shorts and his white t-shirts.
He loved the fact that his mom always seemed to get him new clothes for vacation.
And the white t-shirts were especially crispy and white.
There's nothing nicer than a bright white t-shirt,
He thought to himself.
He could even feel sunglasses on his face,
If he thought about it enough.
He could feel them on the bridge of his nose.
And when he whittled his nose,
They moved on his face.
This is the life,
He thought,
Sunning away,
Maybe in Greece,
Maybe,
Maybe somewhere in Malta.
Ooh,
Maybe somewhere in Portugal.
Ooh,
Maybe,
Maybe Vienna.
He was thinking of all the places he wanted to visit.
And if he didn't visit these places when he was younger,
He was definitely going to do it when he was older.
He was going to be one of those people that just kind of travel around with a backpack and go off on an adventure,
Not necessarily knowing where he was going to go or where he was going to end up.
That,
To Jack,
Was the life.
Maybe when he was older,
He could be a travel agent and that meant he would get cheaper vacations.
You know,
Being in the club and all.
Or maybe he could be a flight attendant.
They seemed to go to lots of interesting places.
And from what he'd learned about flight attendances,
That they got time off sometimes when they went places.
And in his time off,
He would go on adventures.
This way,
He would get to see the world.
He wondered if he painted himself a backpack right now.
And he painted himself being older,
An adult,
If he could just stay that way and literally go backpacking for a year.
And then all of a sudden,
There was a splash underneath Jack and he landed into the bathtub.
His lilo had disappeared.
He'd not noticed because of all the thinking and daydreaming that he was doing,
That his lilo had lasted a very long time.
He looked around and was well aware of the fact that his bathwater was cooler now and definitely more gross looking.
But he had an idea.
Maybe this was a special day.
Maybe this day was more magical.
And if it was,
He was going to draw the jungle.
He started to paint really,
Really fast.
He'd always wanted to go to the jungle.
He was painting like all different green plants as if he was in the middle of the Amazon or something.
There were monkeys on the trees.
There were different animals here,
There and everywhere.
And he was painting as fast as he possibly could because he knew that as soon as it got real,
It would just last for a few seconds possibly.
Even more than that,
This time you never know because it could have been a magical day.
And then he was painting and painting and painting and painting and painting and painting and painting.
And he painted as many things as he could possibly think of.
And then he stopped and then all just appeared around him as real as day.
Jack double blinked.
He was in the Amazon.
He could hear monkeys.
He could hear birds.
He felt the sweltering heat and instantly started to sweat.
There seemed to be things alive everywhere around him.
Things he'd not even painted.
Oh my gosh,
This is the best,
He thought to himself.
He was in a safari outfit as if he was some kind of safari person.
And it was perfect because he was a safari person.
He was in the Amazon.
At first he just stood still.
He didn't do anything.
He didn't know what to do.
At one point he could even hear an elephant.
Well,
That's what he thought.
And then he thought,
Is there even elephants in the Amazon?
And then he was again distracted by all the different colored bugs all around him and the different creatures all around him and the different noises all around him and the sounds and the smells.
And it was just overwhelming.
Then all of a sudden over all of the other noises and all of the other smells and all of the other sensations and feelings and everything that was coming to him all at once so quickly,
He heard a lion roar.
And the lion roared as if it was right there on top of him.
Instantly,
Jack reached out his arms and rubbed all over the bathroom wall to erase the Amazon.
The paints dropped quickly into the bathtub.
Goodness,
Jack had got paint all over him.
He wiped his brow as if to say,
Oh,
That was close.
He could have been eaten by a lion or a tiger or whatever it was.
He would have missed dinner.
He thought to himself,
His mom was cooking shepherd's pie,
One of his favorites.
That would have been awful.
And then he started laughing,
Laughing with relief,
Laughing with a tummy and a body full of adrenaline from the whole experience of what just happened.
He can't wait to tell his mom.
The end.
