I said something yesterday about having wanted "beauty to be my workplace". I don't know where that phrase came from, but it got me thinking. Most of my workplaces over the years have been American 50's-70's era structures/re-builds, from the "old" Time and Life Building in Rockefeller Center, to restaurants, retail and public schools, a community college, and a state office building in a former car dealership. Putting aside the work itself, most of these settings were square, low-ceilinged, and rather soulless. For someone of my sensibilities, resonating on an inner model of a soaring gothic cathedral, these structures were not a match. There was a stretch of several years where I tried to make up for lost time by painting in oils and teaching art workshops, thereby, I hoped, creating a more beautiful "workplace" at home. Yet that was a complete failure...I didn't own any of the places I lived, and found the advertising and financial end of selling my own artwork to be impossible. Energetically, my relationship with our system was still completely off-kilter, and I wasn't finding alignment with that core inner spaciousness and mysticism. Oddly enough, this past winter, living alone near Lake Superior, on an incredibly "fixed" income, and writing this blog every few days, has brought me closer to a beautiful life and workspace than anything since I left England in 1981. It may be more of a case of filling my days with less that is not beautiful (!)
Looking out at world headlines, I feel so powerless and find it so very perplexing. Why have cultures, religions and civilizations wanted to focus on "power over", violence and conflict, not on love and beauty? Why, in the midst of untold environmental challenges and threats of war, are we fixating on futuristic artificial intelligence and metaverse technologies? I suppose for some people, these constructs are beautiful in their own way. Beauty is so subjective. Or perhaps many leaders just have no interest in beauty. That's the challenge...to trust yourself enough to allow yourself to love what you love and find beautiful what you find beautiful, not to be dissuaded when no one else around you is on the same page. I bought a small silver and moonstone pendant yesterday, to wear all the time. If, in the months ahead, I feel I'm losing all track of who I am and what I find beautiful, I can simply touch it and be reminded.
