Showing posts with label joy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joy. Show all posts

Sunday, September 26, 2010

By the Seat of My Pants

Recently, I was asked, "Why do you want to blog?"
Pondering that for a couple of weeks brought me to this one simple truth.
For the joy of it.

The same reason I sing in the car . . . and the shower.
The reason I make unstudied strokes with a  paintbrush.
Or set the paintbrush down to dance around the kitchen to an irresistibly great song on the radio.
For the joy of it.


There's another way to put this, which is equally true, but more analytical.
Blogging, painting, dancing, singing . . . these things create for me a dialog with life.
An interaction.  A back an forth.  A co-creation.
And, that dialog is my way of being more fully awake.  Alive.  Vulnerable.  Growing.

So, when I break out the kids' old watercolor tins, left over from elementary school,
turn on some great music
and stand over the kitchen counter at all hours 
letting the colors and the brushes and the curves choose me. . .


When I paint myself into an ugly corner
and somehow paint my way back out of it (or not) . . .


 It's just about experience.
The joy of it.
Joy which encompasses flailing and frustration and laughter and perspective.

And, I don't think this is about me.
I think it is about Living.
About leaving me out of it and tasting the richness of the unknown.
Letting it roll through me and spill out as it chooses.

Of course, it's there for all of us to do whenever we want to, pretty much.
Or to pass on, either way equally good.
Equally legitimate.  
It's not "worth" anything - won't add up to much that's tangible.

Still, it matters somehow.
I've never been a person with a grand vision I set out to accomplish.
Yet, I've always been a spirit with a grand desire for adventure.
Life, I believe, can be that.


But, hey.  Don't take it from me.  I might be wrong.
I'm just flying by the seat of my pants.








Monday, June 30, 2008

Glass Half Full


It's a beautiful thing. That we choose. Know it or not. A wild and difficult freedom. "Create your life" - the world says, every morning, every minute. The power we wield over our own experience, our own consciousness is incomprehensibly enormous.

During a recent visit, a relative (upon observing the dog's great joy in greeting him) remarked, "Wouldn't it be great to be so stupid that everything made you happy?" Spoken like a true intellectual. And an appropriately miserable one.

Saying nothing, I had the following internal response:

"Wouldn't it be great to be so wise that everything made you happy?"

Either way.

Drink deeply.