Gratitude II

This isn't the post I was going to write today, but I guess being a blogger is a bit like being a stand-up comedian or a story teller.  When you face your audience, a whole different story may come out than you intended.

Do you ever have one of those nights when you simply cannot get to sleep? You end up reading an entire book, and roll your eyes at that cup of tea you had just a little too late in the day.  Once the light is off, you're still sitting bolt upright in the dark, feeling like your eyes are literally propped open with toothpicks.

And, last night, that's when it happened.  I was blindsided by a wave of gratitude unlike any I have ever felt.  Having just read a marvelous book (The House at Tyneford by Natasha Solomons) the only explanation I have is that for this brief moment in time, I could see my own life as a novelist or filmmaker might, as astonishingly full, dramatic, colorful, even suspense-filled.  I was tearful, and yet also beaming with pride, over the degrees earned, the paintings painted, the letters, articles and blogs written, the students taught, the friends made, the travels and risks taken, and the evensong services sung and heard  Whereas normally my attention gets stuck in the many roadblocks, hardships and uncertainties that have characterized my journey -- tempting me to lose heart -- in this context I could see them as important plot devices, catalysts for determination, movement and change.  I was the heroine of my own novel.  And yet, I was also the author.  For perhaps the first time I fully embraced my creative role in all of it, good and bad.

And there was more to come.  The wave of thankfulness lingered for a second in the present, and the warmth, safety, and new friends of my temporary current home, but then the wave kept moving, and pulled into its orbit my whole future.  Now, I'm not talking about the sometimes well meaning, but slightly manipulative, "thanks in advance to the Universe for getting me x, y or z."  Usually this doesn't work because underlying it is fear, a kind of "oh no, what will happen to me if x, y and z don't come?"  No, this appreciation was different.  It was a sort of gratitude bliss that wasn't attached to outcome.  It's like, I can see that I am beginning to trust my choices and actions, in tandem with the powerful stream of Life and Love, and I can feel that what I'm creating now will be even more remarkable and book-worthy if I can stay thankful and open hearted.  I finally fell asleep with a smile on my face.

I won't lie.  It was hard to maintain this level of positivity in the light of day, as a rainy wind blew and fear tried to take the reins.  And yet, at least now I have a clear memory of nearly an hour of my life spent in pure thankfulness.  And I think it will get easier and easier to align to that energy moving forward.  This is one heck of a good book I am writing.  And what I love is, we are all writing amazing books if you think about it.  I truly don't know one person with a boring life! Do you??

So much information

This is another stab at a topic I know I've already written about.  Thanks for bearing with me! 

One of the things that I keep having to remind myself is that there has never been a generation of humans exposed on a daily basis to so much information.  It is not only that there are so many more humans on the planet with every passing day, each with their own interests, skills and activities.  Each person is making an impact ("news" on some level or another), and we are receiving this wide-ranging news almost non-stop over the course of the day, in dozens of forms, and visually taking in ever more input. 

I was proud to be a "generalist" early in my lifetime, a Jill of all trades, master of none.  And I still believe in the American liberal arts education, which encourages exposure to many different academic disciplines. I believe in the kind of mind that can look at the big picture, analyze it, and find creative solutions in ways that perhaps a person of a very specialized education cannot.  Yet, this very generalization almost caused me not to be accepted into my British master's program -- evidently, in those days, an American undergraduate transcript was looked on as suspiciously unfocused.  Mine was a patchwork of music theory, music history, composition, conducting, and piano and organ -- but also English Literature, Chaucer, Scottish Literary Tradition, European history, theology, earth sciences and art.  Kind of a snapshot of me, really.  Then, when I worked as a letters correspondent at Time Magazine, part of our job was to read the New York Times every morning, so that we would be conversant about up-to-the-minute world and national news before responding to reader challenges to Time's own reporting. (This was before 24 hour cable news, Twitter, Facebook, or even e-mail.  Letters were still literally delivered by U.S. mail.) The journalistic "eye" and curiosity rubbed off and has stayed with me.  I can "do" generalist really well.

The down side of this for those of us who might have forgotten our own focus, or might be searching for it from scratch, is that the generalist ethos -- magnified by today's constant news stream -- means that your thoughts are constantly bouncing around from topic to topic to topic.  I give myself a hard time that I'm not more interested in, say, climate change and fashion and politics and new trends in physics. I get sucked into feeling responsible for keeping up with all of it. Then you add to it a tendency to worry about what other people are thinking, and all this external input can be utterly paralyzing. 

I tried to "do" the Times today, and yet after reading a few articles about Great Britain and a few recipes for Thanksgiving, I couldn't go any further.  It's the same with my Facebook news feed: I am grateful for links to the music and art that I am passionate about, and just to see my friends' names and faces.  But I just cannot do much more than scroll through about 80% of it.  I bless the fact that such-and-such is their passion, but have to remind myself constantly that I am not required to add it to my own repertoire.  It's too much.  This human brain has just about reached its capacity.

Our world will only become more and more complex and fascinating.  It's a conundrum.  How can we continue to be informed, educated thinkers and teachers if we have reached the saturation point? I really don't want to become a hermit.  In fact, this coming decade is likely to be the most productive and exciting of my life, if I can focus exclusively on those topics that I truly care about.  The world population may grow by another few billion before the end of my life, and who knows how information will be disseminated by then?  This is life energy continuing to grow and change, and it will not stop. "It's all good." But I suspect that the only way I will truly make my mark is to gently release the tendency to gather and analyze so much new external information, and focus more on creatively expressing what's already within me. 

Focusing

Many years ago, when I was studying at Parsons School of Design, I took a colored pencil course.  You might think that colored pencil would be an easy medium, but it is surprisingly tricky.  Anyway, that particular afternoon, when we walked into the classroom, it was partially darkened so that we would concentrate on an image being projected onto a screen in the front.  The image consisted of blurry areas of color, splotches, really.  At first I thought the teacher had inadvertently neglected to put the slide into focus, but soon I grasped that he had left it blurry on purpose.  He asked us to reproduce what we were seeing, using colored pencils.

I’m sure I thought, “no biggie,” and proceeded in a relaxed way to try to reproduce these beautiful, shimmering areas of color.  And initially, that seemed to be what the whole assignment was going to be about.  Yet probably about five minutes into the exercise, I started to notice that each time I looked up, the image appeared to be getting slightly sharper.  Indeed, I finally watched as our professor inconspicuously touched the “focus” button about every two or three minutes.  In about half an hour, the image reached full clarity, and our sketches overall were quite powerful, in part because we had responded initially only to areas of shading and color, without being distracted by detail.  As we added detail, it was supported more richly than if we had seen the image (I believe it was a Manet still life) clearly from the start.

I guess you have figured out that I like metaphors, and it is dawning on me that this art exercise is a perfect metaphor for my last few years, having started with an extremely blurry image, and begun, piece by piece, to “draw” it, as it slowly came into focus.  Moments of furious creative activity have been followed by days, even months of “processing” the updated picture.  Each time I pause, things begin to look sharper.

Most recently, the Danielle LaPorte book was so honest and direct that I was forced to confront how I continue to almost deliberately and fearfully shy from my own identity, leaving my picture blurry.  After years of “trying” to be many wonderful things, my real passions (writing/research; England; English church music; women’s spirituality; English history, art, spiritual history, etc.) came into sharper focus than ever.  A few days of “processing” later, I started work on the collage, which presented this material quite differently but more visually and somewhat more powerfully.  After that, there were several more days of processing, and then this past weekend was another turn of the focus wheel…I joined an academic online group whose topic aligns with a growing area of interest and research for me.  I then got up the courage to order two inexpensive used books that are relevant to the kind of writing I may soon be doing…why it still requires courage to do these things, I don’t know.  When you are trying to bring focus to decades of blurriness, each step, each placement of pencil to paper, is scary.

The picture that is emerging is slightly off target from the traditional path for someone who loves English church music.  That’s OK.  My journey always was, as a young woman of my generation. That’s why things got so blurry in the first place. I am thrilled this morning to learn that a young American woman has been named an Organ Scholar at an English cathedral, one of the first women and, I am quite sure, the first American woman to do so.  Wow. A lot has changed in 40 years…

But my picture, sixty years in the making, will look nothing like hers, even though we share the same passion.  It is made up of a whole wider set of colors and experiences which, in the end, I am glad I had. Each time I put my head down and creatively process my emerging path, the unseen “teacher” seems to be sharpening up the image.  When I look up, I’m seeing more and more that interests me and delights me, and seeing it more clearly – my own personal life masterpiece.  The more I focus on abstracts like joy and happiness and color and abundance, the more the details are presenting themselves, before my very eyes…

Spring ahead, fall back...

I am sure many of you have had the experience of moving forward in a positive way, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, waves of old fear and negativity seem to rush in, sort of a tsunami.  Almost every spiritual teacher I have read in the last few years describes this phenomenon.  The general consensus is that, when you start to move to a new level, you unleash old fears that are, in effect, threatened by your progress.  These fears have, in their own way, been a crutch, a safety net, and they are used to being useful, I suppose. 

Actually, what is manifesting for me right now isn’t fear so much as impatience, and I think that may be considered slight progress in itself.  Impatience is somewhat further up Abraham-Hicks’s feeling scale than fear or despair.  Impatience means that you are more alive, more engaged, not digging yourself into a hole and giving up.  I'm vacillating between chomping at the bit, and losing steam entirely or sliding backward.

I think it has to do with focus.  It’s pretty straightforward.  When I focus on the future, and on healing and forward movement, I spring ahead, as I did, for instance, when I went “window” shopping earlier this week.  When, perhaps due to fatigue, I just cannot maintain that focus, my thoughts inevitably turn to the past, the obstacles I’ve encountered, etc. etc.  And when I focus on that, I start to "fall back" down a slippery slope toward powerlessness and helplessness.  When I think about obstacles, more obstacles start to appear in the present.

Part of it may be about being ever more deliberate in creating a new image.  For about five years, my “image” has been that of a woman with “a few hundred dollars and a dream.” It was dramatic, it was heroic, and it was, in an odd way, magical, because I have accomplished some stunning things on almost nothing.  But when that is your default setting, you return to that extremely tenuous place time and time again, only to start all over again.  Your inner self somehow thinks that your phrase is your identity, your “home.”  And there is the implication in that wording that I am separate from my dream, which creates its own reality.

So I think it’s time to replace that “catch phrase” and default setting, and quickly.  The first one that comes to mind is, “living the dream.”  Hmmm, definitely an improvement!  I’ll keep you posted!  Have a great weekend, and hope your path is positive!

Desire II

Just an update to a recent blog, where I spoke of having spent years not even wanting to own things, and limiting almost to nothing my contact with stores (other than the lowest end big box stores, where I could get what little I bought, inexpensively.)

So the other day, a friend and I went to must be two of the nicest gift shops in the Adirondacks.  I wouldn’t have done it on my own, but I decided it would be good practice.  Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t have gone in, or would have gone in, made a quick spin around and walked out embroiled in a complex set of negative emotions: jealousy, frustration, superiority ("I don’t need those kinds of things") – you name it.  Instead, I took a deep breath, and got started.  I smelled the scented soaps.  I felt the glorious carpeting.  I looked with wonder at the colors of the cashmere scarves.  I imagined the jewelry on me, not on the little cardboard cards.  I admired gorgeous, innovative clothing designs.  I laughed at the clever toys, and tried testers of several colognes and scents.  When I looked at the price tags, instead of seeing them as monsters, with the power to reduce me to a shame-filled nothing, I just saw them as numbers.  “Hmm…175 dollars, 20 dollars, 695 dollars…”  I didn’t buy anything, but I found that I walked out of these places in a really new mind frame.  I appreciated what other people had created.  I wanted.  I desired.  I was oddly at peace.

Now, of course, these are gift shops, but I’ve been frozen even in that regard.  Not able to give to myself, or to others.  So it was also the first time in years I saw things that friends might like, and that, too, was progress.

Many people might say, well now, Liz, if you had played by the rules all these years and focused on money first, and making more of it, you wouldn’t have been in this position.  And I don’t know what comes first, the chicken or the egg.  But if you feel so cut off from yourself that you don’t even know what you like or what your preferences are, the desire to thrive and earn and be part of the whole network of “things” dies, and all the consumer products in the world aren’t incentive enough because you don’t see yourself in them. 

Do I want all 6 or 7 billion of us to become passionate consumers, desiring more and more until we drown ourselves in stuff?  No.  But I found out from hard experience that the desire to express, to own, to create, to thrive is life. It is part of being human and living on a physical planet.  Many of my friends are going through a process of simplifying and paring down, and this, too is natural at certain stages.  But inwardly, I find myself saying, don’t go too far!  Don’t overdo it! Be very thoughtful about keeping those few things that genuinely reflect you, that are a physical manifestation of you, because there needs to be an anchor to keep you on the planet from which to start growing and desiring again.  I don’t think it’s a given that we will “find ourselves” when we’ve pared down to nothing, although it worked for me eventually.  While it may be that many of us need to do the inner work first, then “consume” from there, it’s a delicate balancing act not to end up with zeros all across the board.

I’m pleased that I saw things that were beautiful to me, and wanted them.  I’m pleased that I could see them, and not be sent into a tailspin.  I’m pleased that I smiled as we drove away.  Suddenly, a whole new world of loveliness and possibility seems to be opening up to me.

 

My New Resume

OK, so about a week ago I finished Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter book.  I am still reeling from the power of it, and so thankful to have had it brought to my attention.  However, it ended before I had quite made sense of how to incorporate all my new revelations into a cohesive whole, a brand or career to carry forward into the world.

Of course, in the end, there haven’t really been any “new” revelations at all.  I have just run out of excuses (and fears).  A book like LaPorte’s simply gives energetic iteration to the message all of us have heard in a million guises: “be yourself.”  And yet those of us who, for whatever reason, have crammed that self into a tiny box, sealed it tight and hoped to be tossed into a trash bin somewhere – people like us need to read such books regularly for a constant reminder. As the energetic “hit” of the last page of an excellent book starts to fade, I can feel myself starting to slink off to find my old box.  That Greek Chorus of negativity starts to sing: “other people can be themselves but you cannot”; “there is no modern job or career that fits your passion and your journey, so forget it”; “everyone else is miserable in their job.  What makes you so special?”; “if you haven’t figured it out by 59-and-three-quarters, you’re a goner.”

One of the things that really strikes me is the utter and total disconnect between the material that this book evoked from me, and my resume.  The latter is too traditional, and I know that.  It has been utterly inadequate at doing anything but represent the bare bones of what I’ve done: my degrees, and the highlights of my work life at Time Magazine, teaching, running a small art association, and office work/data entry.  (What my resume does not highlight are my many experiences in retail, waitressing, dishwashing, ice-cream scooping, house- and pet-sitting, and everything I have done just to try to stay alive in recent years.)  This traditional resume long ago ceased to be effective at expressing who I am or what I am capable of, perhaps because I had lost touch with those things myself.  It barely gets me jobs of any kind any more, and it is confusing, even to me, and feels “dead.”  It represents 35 years of exile and hibernation.  So to go from the high of LaPorte’s book to thinking about my resume was demoralizing in the extreme.  I almost got out the packing tape to seal my little box up and set it out there with the garbage, again.

Fortunately, the artist in me chose that moment to kick into high gear and breathe a little life into the process. I knew I needed to make a collage.  Not a “slap a few words and pictures on some cardboard” collage, but a big, complex, self-portrait of me and my passions.  It took nearly a week, but when I stood back and looked at it, it was, like, “this is me, and hell, is she extraordinary!”  I realized that this is my resume!  This is who I am!

So many potential blog topics come to mind:  the soul-deadening aspect of trying to get a job with a written list of accomplishments; the feminist and artistic implications of a “right brain” person not functioning in a left brain world (creatively, I can do both equally well, but clearly the right brain/artistic/musical/mystical/spontaneous piece is how I really operate); the inadequacy of our traditional job market process and financial system as a vehicle for so many of us and our unique gifts.  As we try to pour ourselves into the mold that someone else needs, we can lose ourselves.  And, heck, that’s the point of books like these, to urge us to focus on who we are, not what people want from us.  It’s not for nothing that the word “employer” (in French) is “to use”, and employee means, “to be used.”  I begin to understand why I’ve just been unable to fit in.  Indeed, maybe I’m even strangely proud of it!

This morning, I’m praying for the courage to get this huge collage scanned, then put a copy of it under my name on a piece of paper. I’m praying for the courage to call this my resume, the courage to create a web page with this image as its focus.  Maybe there are people who have been looking, literally, for what I have to offer, looking for a unique vision and a colorful life journey.  That’s a resume I’d be proud to hand out, and which might successfully magnetize the kinds of opportunities I’d love!

All Saints

Just operating under the assumption that many of the people I know are "saints"...Happy Sunday!