I am a creature of habit, meaning that I am comforted by knowing what is going to happen at the same time, everyday. In many cases, it gives my life structure, predictability, peace…
The amount of joy I derive from my breakfast every morning actually amuses me–it’s the same everyday; that’s the point. Two pieces of Ezekial Bread toasted alongside a tall mug of vanilla chai tea with soy creamer is not that exciting, except to me. It’s delicious, but far from exotic, and clearly, there is no element of surprise in it. I like it the sameness of it–it doesn’t get old, and someday when it does, I will find something new and then stick to that for months on end and derive great joy from the predictability of that.
Regardless of how it may appear with this revelation, I also have an adventurous side to my nature. I like variety when it comes to some aspects of my life–for instance, my ideal vacation is having a destination, but absolutely no itenerary and no bookings except the first and last night’s hotel. Right now I have over twelve paintings spread across every flat surface of my studio. The process that I use requires that I put on layers of paint and then let them dry before applying more. And because I use lots of water when applying paint, there’s not a lot of control–the paint runs, it bleeds, to splatters, and I love it. That’s one of the reasons I chose the process I use–I can’t control it. It’s full of surprises and accidents that I have to learn to work with and incorporate. I have to constantly let go of my specific ideas of what I’m going for, yet hold to some vague picture that keeps the whole thing heading toward some general destination. I move, almost meditative, from painting to painting to painting, and then start over with the first one and a new layer of paint.
Richard Bach Quote:
The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.
It occurred to me sometime in the last year that maybe, just maybe, things are not as they seem….ever. And if that were true, what would that mean? What if, whatever the ‘ultimate reality’ really is, the very nature of it was so overwhelmingly open, and good, and profiting from everything just as it is, that things that appeared to us as injustice and tragedy were really just things for which we could not open ourselves up wide enough? What if we could actually not only ‘call’ everything that happens good, but actually ‘see’ it as good?
I have to admit, I am only in the beginning stages of being able to imagine such a worldview…I’ve been thinking this way for a long time. We are taught as children to group things into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. “Don’t play out in the street! You could get hit by a car and be killed!” I have to ask myself–if we did not see death as this really awful thing, something to be avoided at all costs, something that ‘ended’ everything, would the above warning have nearly the impact? What if I believed in a universe in which death was not at all the end, but the beginning? Or maybe just a continuation, but in a form that, from this vantage point of flesh and blood, we cannot comprehend?
Another Richard Back quote:
Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.
I personally am ready to begin really questioning and stretching my ideas about what is good and what is bad, what is fortunate and what is detrimental, what is possible and what is impossible. It feels natural to begin questioning everything–I’m not sure why, but just with the introduction of these thoughts, I started to feel a bit like I had grabbed hold of something because it was colorful, beautiful and looked fun, and the more I looked it at, the more it captivated me–and my hope is that even if I look down and realize that the ground that I have become so accustomed to living in contact with is far beyond my reach (that is, that trying to ‘go back’ to what I knew before would not be possible=a sort of ‘death’ of reality) I will be so captivated by the view from my new perspective that all I can think about is what wonderful possibilities lay before me.
Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. Nothing is the worst thing that can happen to us!
Richard Bach
Its like when I had thought that something so terrible happened to me and I could just tell everyone who stopped my way to only hear me say, “don’t you see the pain” and “can’t you see what happened to me.” Then I realized that nothing I have gone through in life made me incapable of living the very best I can. What kept me from realizing it was the way I could see life as, and then when I opened my heart and allowed it to soften only did I see the beauty in life present. Matter a fact, it has always been there; I just never saw it. What a beautiful post!
In my hopes one day, I want to capture the little girl inside of me who was unwilling at times to peek out and about for fear, but now as the woman I am today I think she’d be happy to reach out to the stars. If I can capture that in one of my storytellings, writings or even paintings will I be able to express that child in me truly finding the wings to fly, learn and live again.