Impassioning the Soul
Impassion/Impassioned/Impassioning. (verb, adjective.)
Since I was a small child, I have had a love for art and art history. My Uncle Jim started out as an art historian and a museum curator. Then he became the Director of the Harvard Art Museums when I was in school, and then the Director of The Chicago Art Institute when I was a young adult, and now he’s the President and CEO of the Getty Trust in Los Angeles. I’ve watched him over the years build a career out of his passion. As you may be able to imagine, my cousins and I spent many of our visits together walking around museums and getting the opportunity to see incredible works of art. To this very day, there’s this feeling that rinses over me almost the moment I walk into a museum. It’s a reverence, a holiness….almost as if the museum is a temple or a church. I feel as if I’m a guest, invited into thousands of artists’ private spaces. I can sit for hours on a museum bench and listen with my eyes- as if each piece is beckoning me to come closer, sit down, and let the magic of its’ voice surround me. Like there are secrets the pieces want to share with me, and only me. Art holds secrets for everyone, but the mysteries shared are personal to each viewer. What a gift and an honor it’s always been for me to see the expressions of an artists’ inner workings of their heart and mind, as experience what it means to me. I find art fascinating to participate in- visually. To actually create a painting, a craft, or a sculpture myself? Not so much!
Case in point, in college I took ceramics class to meet an art requirement. It sucked and I hated it. I pictured myself meeting some guy and having a Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in “Ghost” experience, but instead all I got was a classroom full of granola-ish girls who wanted to be one with the mud. I discovered ceramics is a dirty, gooey, manicure-ruining endeavor. I couldn’t get the consistency of the slip correct- the proportions of the water and clay were never quite right. My pieces were either too thick or too thin, breaking too easily. In the words of Austin Powers, “It wasn’t my bag, baby!” Even worse, we would have to take turns cleaning out the firing kiln and it was horrible- felt like we were having to scrape out the gates of hell. Wire BBQ brushes were the tools of choice used to scrape dried globs of glaze off the firing shelf, and of course we wore oh-so-fashionable safety goggles to protect our eyes from the flying debris. One day I emerged from the kiln room covered in soot and ash and made an executive decision that pottery was not the hobby for me. Unfortunately, I was too far into the semester to drop the it, so I began to casually roll into class on “island time”, like Jeff Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Suddenly, I was an expert in collecting the attendance points, nailed all the vocabulary tests, but I totally half-assed all the projects. My work looked like a two year old’s playdough creations. I became super skilled at slipping out of class like a ninja before the “kiln cleaners” were announced for the week. Boom- I was gone in a flash, whirling out the door in a cloud of Jovan Musk perfume from Walgreens and Salon Selectives hairspray, like a thief in the night.
There’s a 1988 song by Poison called “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn”, and it seems to me to be a fairly universal truth that most things come at a price. Chocolate, at least for me, is “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.” I can’t get on a flight without dealing with the TSA. Can’t have a baby without going through the pregnancy and giving birth. (Some can, but they pay a price in other ways, namely emotional and financial.) Time spent with friends is generally time I’m not spending with my husband and my kids. There is always a price, and it’s up to me to determine what’s worth it and what isn’t- and that depends on many factors. Who really needs my time more? Am I burnt out and really need some alone time to recharge? What internal factors are going on and what are my motives? Am I people pleasing or am I giving selflessly, from a pure heart? Sometimes I don’t listen to what my spirit is telling me and I just do what I think I want to do and I make the wrong call. But it’s actually not “wrong”-any consequences are helpful information in making the next choice, as I determine which path to take.
Spoiler alert: the price is usually the part I don’t like. (Shocker.) But it doesn’t matter if I don’t “like” it or not. It is what it is. It’s the acceptance part of life. I don’t have to approve of something to accept it. And what’s the use wasting a bunch of time and energy on something I truly can do nothing about anyway? (Or in some cases shouldn’t do anything about- it would be the wise thing NOT to act on.) Nope. I’m just a human, and I make choices all the time that have different outcomes-and as long as I’m generally operating in love and kindness, (and making the necessary adjustments when I’m not), there is no need to bitch-slap myself up the side of the head. That’s not being very loving toward myself, and above all else I must treat myself with honor and kindness.
The worst thing I can do is beat myself up and get all tangled up in the web of a shame-spiral. I’ve found a mantra that works well for me as I move through life… when I start to get stressed out, future-tripping over people, places and things I cannot control. I try to remember to pause, close my eyes and take a breath and say in my heart, “Relax, Release, Be at Peace.” This simple phrase has successfully helped me obtain a hall pass from many emotional and mental tailspins that used to send me whirling out of control, even if just in my mind. If I actually have control over something (or the illusion of control), the price I’m no longer willing to pay anymore is the emotional and mental variety, if it can be helped. What helps me, time and time again, rediscover and maintain that peace are practicing the activities and rituals (some tangible and some intangible) that impassion my soul.
The top 10 “Roses” I will happily “pay” for:
1) A museum entrance fee: to walk around in solitude for an afternoon viewing priceless works of art-in an entire building where there is no “wrong” interpretation of the work is like having a warm blanket wrapped around my soul. Especially when I didn’t have to make the piece or clean out the kiln. J
2) All the financial and time costs necessary to achieve a front row seat on a Hawaiian beach, letting the waves and the sunshine wash over my spirit, even for a few days.
3) Books and Poetry on Spirituality. I have found unspeakable pleasure opening some books over and over again, and having a new message reveal itself to me as if it was never in there before. Reading the same books in different seasons of my life has been so moving, so astounding for me, that it’s brought me an incredible amount of fulfillment.
4) Coffee in the morning with my sweet husband. I cannot remember a morning (unless one of us has been out of town without the other) when he has not brought me a coffee in bed and we’ve shared the commencement of a new day together. Even if one of us is out of town, or if Andrew has to leave super early, we call each other and greet the day together.
5) Family Dinners with my kids. Not about the food, but about the experience of the connection. I don’t even say much. I just listen to them talk, laugh and connect, telling each other about their day, reliving old memories. It’s as if my heart is recording every story (inappropriate or not), every smile, every belly laugh.
6) Writing. This is just about the only art form where I find the process legitimately enjoyable, liberating and non-annoying. I do have self-imposed guidelines, but I generally don’t let myself have any real, official, solid rules when I write. There’s no myriad of “stuff”, no cumbersome “gear”, no competition to be the best or any ridiculousness like that. Just me, my crazy scary mind, and a laptop.
7) Yoga. Finding a mind/body connection through yoga was one of the avenues that healed my wounded spirit a few years back, and it taught me to love and care for myself without any expectations of myself. Yoga has taught me that to compare my body or my “abilities” is just a one-way ticket to Discouragement-Ville. It’s taught me to remember let go of that old “compare and despair” trap.
8) Meditation. Turns out, like so many things in my life, that meditation is not what I once thought it was. Growing up in the church, meditation was kind of a “taboo” new age word, unless it was being quoted from a scripture verse in the Bible. Meditation is not some scary, fortune-telling, devil-channeling activity, as I once believed it to be. It’s actually the practice of clearing the mind- and for me, more specifically, shutting up long enough to hear God in my heart speak louder than the thoughts in my brain. Meditation to me now is one of the most centering, most grounding gifts to myself that I can do every day. It’s simple, it’s free, it’s a gift that pays off in countless ways.
9) Collecting and lighting Glassy Babies. If you don’t know what these are, Glassy Baby is a Seattle based company started by a woman named Lee Rhodes who was healed of cancer-3 times. Her husband had taken glass blowing lessons, and he created small, hand blown glass cups for her amidst her health challenges, which she would light with tea light candles to find solace during the difficult cancer treatments. Not only did these candle holders bring her hope, but also inspired a glass blown candle holder business to bring hope and healing to others, donating money from sales (not profits) to all kinds of charities over the years since the company’s birth in 2001. Each Glassy Baby is uniquely named and colored, in honor of someone or something. There’s even a Glassy Baby coffee table book now featuring each Glassy Baby’s name and the story behind it. Personally what brings me great joy about Glassy Babies are the fact that they are remembrances of a life changing event in someone’s journey. A person, a moment in time, a marker stone along one’s timeline. A piece of humanity in a glass piece of artwork. Now those of you who know me well know how much I just seriously love that shit. J
10) Chunks of solitude. As I’m aging, I recognize more and more that I’m losing my “formerly known as” extroverted personality. I used to get energy from being around people, but even more than that, I could not stand to be alone. The pendulum has swung in the opposite direction for me now. I still love people and the dopamine rush that comes from connecting with others, particularly once we move past the BS small talk and connect at a soul level. But as much as I love that, I actually crave and protect my alone time now. I know how badly I suffer (and those around me suffer) when I don’t make it happen. It’s not a matter of “having the time.” Not very many of us actually “have” the time- we prioritize it, we create it. We pull it out our ass if we have to. But we know if we don’t have it, we wither quickly, like a plant in the constant desert heat that needs water. It’s usually a huge thorn; a hefty price tag that brings us to this realization.
These are a few of the things that impassion my soul. These roses have no thorns, to me. They are for fun and for free (free as in a cost I’m happily more than willing to pay), and worth every sacrifice it takes to get there. These are the things that may appear to be withdrawals at first glance, but they are actually deposits for me. They are both short and long term investments, and their importance continues to rise and becomes paramount as I see the benefits multiply before my eyes. And this is the good stuff….no need for safety goggles to protect my eyes from the nasty, flying dried globs of pottery glaze on the things that no longer serve me. Nope. I want all my senses- everything that I am- to embrace these roses, and search for more of them in the garden of life. They just keep becoming more and more beautiful and valuable to me.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived……I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” --Thoreau