Origami

It is supposed to be fun and exciting, using our professional talents in such a personal way.  I am an interior designer by education; I spent twelve years working in commercial design and architecture, another twelve years after that managing the process. He’s the owner operator of his 28-year-old remodeling business.  Between us we have 52 years of  experience. 

Designing and building an addition for our house should be a seamless, efficient process; something we can do in our sleep. And yet, we’re in the eighth month of design and we’re still pushing pencil on paper.  Literally. I think I might lose my mind.  Why is this so hard?

There have been several times over the course of this project that I have questioned whether we should continue.  As more and more road blocks are thrown in front of us, I wonder if a divine messenger is trying to tell us this is a bad idea, or if we’re meant to persevere despite the challenges we encounter.  I’ve asked myself if this is truly our dream or if we are making it our dream because it seems like it’s what we are supposed to do.

 

Alan Moore, in his book, “Do/Design: Why beauty is the key to everything” is bringing some clarity, showing me, in actuality, I am fighting the very design process I claim to know and love. There is no doubt I am in a hurry.  I moved out of my house and put the majority of my belongings in storage ten months ago.  I lost my art studio in the process, and the current living situation affords little space to spread out, surround myself with my tools and inspiration, and create.  

Living in the Midwest means our construction window is dictated by Mother Nature.  As the grass greens, flowers bloom and die off, as June drifts into July, I am fearful our window will close before the first shovel is pushed into the ground.  I know I should be embracing all the planning.  Instead I’m fixated on getting it done.

 

We are, for the most part, aligned on what “it” is, how we want this new space to look, but how it will all come together can’t be seen yet.  He knows instinctively what will happen in terms of constructability, and I know instinctively what will happen in terms of finishes, but neither of us knows exactly. We need the help of some experts versed in building codes and calculations to assist. Yet we’re perennially confounded and frustrated by the fact that they don’t seem to understand us. We’ve told them what we’re looking for in their vernacular, and in as many different words as we have available to us. We’ve sketched ideas with pen and trace.  We’ve resorted to redrawing portions on our own computer-aided design program.  We’ve gone so far as to use white-out (I know). What we’re really asking for is some unconventional design, we’re asking our experts to change their mindset, to think outside of the box. We are pushing boundaries, but we’re supposed to be in order to bring our vision to life.

 

It's easier and faster to simply go along with the first ideas presented to us.  In the name of speed and a bit of impatient desperation, this is my default position.  I’ll make it work, I tell myself, whatever it is.  Let’s just get it done.  He is the master of his trade and I have, at times, underestimated the strength of his vision. I have misinterpreted his curiosity and persistent questioning of the conventional, chalking it up to a mere difference in philosophy.

He is willing to create conflict in the name of achieving his vision. He is willing to cut ties mid-stream and find a more like-minded expert to take us to the finish.  He knows we need to surround ourselves with those who are open to our vision and willing to share it, even if it means abandoning their own. I don’t show it very well, but I am grateful for his relentless pursuit to be heard, and the courage he invokes to challenge and make a change in favor of what he knows can be done. To cite an example in Moore’s book, if our home addition were a piece of paper, it was doomed to be a simple paper airplane that would never fly. Now it has the opportunity to be folded into a beautiful and graceful bird. Our thing of beauty.

It’s leading to some painful consequences and a protracted timeline that feel a lot like failure. But again, this is the essence of design.  We are going through an iterative process of sharing ideas, talking about them and either enriching them or tossing them out. It’s this constant working of the form that brings what’s in our mind’s eye to the surface.

 

I experience this in sketching class.  In front of an impossibly challenging sculpture, foreshortened arms and legs coming at me, I am furiously flipping fresh pages of newsprint. The charcoal glides across the page, first in thin, light lines, progressing to heavy, dark marks when I’m reasonably sure I have the proportions right. Somehow an image emerges from this fervent application, the working of the form.  Two hours go by in an instant and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself the entire time.  

How do I put myself in this same place as we work on the design of what will become our place?

As a kid I dabbled in the Japanese art of folding paper. If you skip a step or make sloppy folds you end up with something less than the beautiful piece of art you envision. I know firsthand it takes time, patience and precision to create beauty. The divine messenger tells me so.

Impermanence

“Celebrate with me!” I say as I come up the stairs with two champagne flutes and a bottle of Cava from the basement refrigerator. It’s spontaneous and I don’t care.  We’re not doing anything special, planting a vegetable and herb garden, watching poppies flower from their buds. We forget sometimes how much there is to celebrate in the course of an ordinary day. We spend our lives wishing for extraordinary, attempting to keep up with the highlight reels our friends and strangers we admire post on social media.

Scrolling through LinkedIn posts this evening, I came across a woman sharing her disappointments, her failed sales calls in the past work week, deliberately debunking our redacted stories in the name of humility and truth. It’s refreshing and something we need more of.

We spend time trying to stay in front of trials and tribulations.  Our expectation is that life should be pain-free and we’re doing something wrong if we’re presented with hardship. We think we should agree with each other all the time, we high-five when we’re on the same page.

I say it’s easy to be on the same page.  Too easy.  If we’re on the same page all the time than maybe we’re surrounding ourselves with people who are too much like we are, people who can’t offer an opposing point of view and therefore shelter us from bigger ideas, prevent us from growing.

 

Aren’t we better off being challenged with an opposing view, and instead of trying to debate or litigate our positions, putting our energy into managing conflict, in finding compromise?  It’s not always going to be pretty, we’re not going to be proud of our outbursts or what we look like when frustration boils over, but we’re human and real and taking the first step toward seeking understanding.

And this is what I want to celebrate today.  I’m here on this earth for another day with a partner who never stops working toward understanding. I’m his flower; he’s my gardener.  That’s the mission of his soul.  I’m so fortunate.    

Homemade

He says he’d like me to make him a cookbook for his birthday; one with all his favorite recipes.  I’m flattered and touched.  It won’t be Julia Child’s tome on French cooking, but I can certainly cover a few pages. Enough to get him started anyway. As this piece of artwork comes together I decide what I’d really like to share with him as he takes these tender and tentative steps into adulthood, more than anything in the world, is a recipe for happiness.  

I think about the ingredients for a happy life.  Are they exotic specialties we need to hunt down in obscurity?  Or are they staples we can find anywhere?  I settle on the idea that happiness consists of endless blends of plentiful items readily available wherever we are, yet made elusive by the ever present doubt we have in our worthiness.  A mouthful, for sure.  The recipe for happiness is not precise, anyone can serve up this dish. Nor does it have to be complicated, but we sure make it so. 

The first, and really only required ingredient is belief in yourself.  A yoga instructor strikes a chord for parenting when she says, “I will believe in you until you believe in yourself.”  Can we really transfer the reins in this way?  Can we impart worthiness on another?  I hope so.  I have been believing in my kids since the day I met them.  I’ve been telling them so since they could understand my words.  

Those who conform to society’s standards of success appear to have an easier time with self-worth.  There are signs all over the place showing them they are on the right path, that they fit in.  It’s those who feel the inescapable pull of the tide compelling them to be different, to hone strengths and use gifts others don’t see or understand who really struggle.  It’s these fragile hearts who need to believe in themselves the most.  And who are most vulnerable to self-sabotage.  

Being different is scary and hard.  Doing things differently than everyone else can be exhausting.  We have to endure a barrage of questions and explain our thoughts over and over again.  We’re misunderstood.  Our direction is misinterpreted.  We’re slowing things down, we’re getting in the way.  Easier to just give in, or crawl into a hole and give up.  Better to push away, even throw out all those other ingredients waiting to be added to this happiness recipe. Without a belief in yourself they won’t be needed. 

Self-belief is the magic ingredient, it keeps the soufflé of happiness from sinking.  It doesn’t matter what else you put in the bowl.  You can have a wonderful partner, lots of friends, a nice roof over your head.  You can travel the world, run your own business, none of it makes a difference if you don’t believe in yourself. 

Supporting those we care about while they are searching for the primary ingredient to happiness requires faith and fortitude.  We see it on the shelf. We measure it out.  We wait patiently until they pour it in the bowl.  We believe in them until they believe in themselves. 

Simmer

“Wasn’t it great to have a snow day yesterday,” her words are more of a proclamation than a question. “I got so much stuff done!”  This was not my experience; I wasted massive amounts of time in frustrated hand-wringing over the fact that the weather spent the week dashing my best laid plans.  While I finally made it to my yoga mat to hear my instructor’s delight in this unexpected respite, all my attempts to attend exercise classes during the week were either thwarted or aborted by snow.  She spent her day in frenzied productive bliss; I wallowed, insipid and conflicted, unable to regroup with any kind of positive energy.

I’m an alpha dog, a friend observes. This is not news to me.  I used to think I just like to be in charge.  I’m discovering now that I have pretty much put myself in places where I am in charge.  This, I’m learning, makes me horribly out of practice in situations where I am second in command or expected to partner. And worse yet, I am dissident, defiant and literally unable to bear it when my partner doesn’t see it or do it my way.  How humbling and embarrassing.  Any skills in diplomacy, arbitration or mediation escape me. I am desperate to recoup them; the alternatives are non-starters. Submission leaves me feeling marginalized, dominance is hollow.

When I think about my alphaness, it’s more than not being able to follow along, it’s this feeling that my ability to put my time to my definition of “good use” is stripped from me.  I don’t know how to handle it.

Ambition is a cruel catalyst. There is so much I want to create and achieve in this life. I abhor what I view as the necessary nuisances required to keep me going. I have trained myself to shut it down and sleep at night only because my body flips on the irritation switch when I’ve been awake too long. It’s the same thing with eating.

I’m mad that my hips and knees won’t let me run anymore, as I believe this is the biggest bang for my buck when it comes to maintaining fitness.  It’s the original moving meditation and I’m bitter that this fulfilling practice is no longer an option for me.  I long for the “Born to Run” life of barefoot footfalls and chomping on chia seeds. And this alpha dog misses the family dog.  She was my reason for getting outside and walking at least once a day, if not twice.

I overhear my nephew in a conversation about Stephen Hawking.  His matter-of-fact comment is “the guy’s body just crapped out on him”.  These words come from an 18-year old who has never walked. What rich perspective.

I’ve been told I don’t like change. I ask myself if that’s really true.  I have weathered massive amounts of change, both forced upon me and ignited by me. The transforming is unsettling and emotional, but I can’t in all honesty call myself resistant.  Sure I wish I used the stereo enough to remember how all the buttons work.  Same with the technology in the conference rooms.  But I don’t think this is so much a resistance to change as it is a frustration with my own limitations and an impatience for any learning curve taking time away from my relentless drive to get to what is important to me.

Yoga is good for me in that it begs me to slow down and be kind to myself.  The 90 minutes is excruciating, not because the room is too hot or the exercise is too difficult, but because time is such a precious commodity.  Can’t I get the benefits without investing so much time?  The answer, of course, is no. The instructors always say the postures we hate the most are the ones we need the most.  Apparently I need the whole damn 90-minute experience. And so this is yet another gift yoga presents to me. It just may explain why I am compelled to go to class while at the same time repelled by the time it demands of me.

Maybe the lesson here is striving to create the best experience possible wherever life dictates I spend my time?  I don’t eat lunch with friends. Breakfast, if I eat it, is shoved down behind the steering wheel. People talk about sitting down at the family table for dinner at night, resurrecting this lost art of connecting over a meal. What if this happened three times a day?

The other lesson is gratitude. Every alpha dog doesn’t always get her day. But lots of great stuff comes her way every day. Maybe if she was brave enough to step into the paws of a beta dog or even an omega dog she would learn how to be instead of do?

Stephen Hawking says, “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”  A snow day seems like a safe place to start.

Parity

“I want to be a human being, not a human doing.”  Her challenge hangs in the air as we’re packing suitcases for a week at the beach, two Type-A personalities trying to unwind how we will balance the guilt we feel leaving behind our busy work schedules with the glee and inspiration we know will appear when we unplug. We’ve just spent a piece of the morning sipping coffee in a hot tub high in the mountains attempting to solve this and other world problems.

We talk about work as an addiction, albeit an acceptable addiction; something just as debilitating as alcohol or drugs, yet strangely coveted because society has deemed constant running on the corporate treadmill as the path to monetary rewards spelling happiness and success. But aren’t all addictions the same in the end, excessive practices waxing compulsive with the power to eventually consume us?

 

Think about it.  The runner pushing her legs unhealthy distances week after week in the name of training for a marathon.  The gamer in front of his screen, fingers working the joystick level after level on a quest for the top.  Our unnatural attachment to social media and the constant checking up on what everyone else is doing or, more importantly, how they are responding to us.  Are we living our lives or posting our lives?  These behaviors, and others like them, when practiced in excess can intrude on our relationships, isolate us and diminish the quality of our lives. 

I’ve decided the warning flag is time. It’s not the activity itself that is offensive, but how long or how often you are subjecting your body or your mind to any one task. Vices stealthily overtake us when we continually dose more than is prescribed.  I remember vividly friends who, while many of us had to bribe our children to read, deprived their son, a voracious reader, of books as punishment for bad behavior.  With only a finite number of hours in the day, when we spend a disproportionate amount of time on one activity, we leave room for little else.  We humans need a rich life of social interaction, quiet meditation, physical activity and heads-down concentration. Spending too much time in any one place starts to interfere. And those who make us aware of our imbalances tend to be the ones who care about us the most, those who suffer when we are absent from other parts of life.

   

So maybe the answer isn’t to completely disconnect from your work while on vacation.  Sounds horrifying, I know, and it’s not healthy to be that person who attempts to conduct business at the same pace on vacation as at home.  You may think you’re staying on top of things, but while your travel companions silently steam, your back-up at the office is wondering why you asked them to cover for you in the first place. What I’m suggesting is checking in, reading messages periodically and responding only to what’s critical, or taking a call or two to keep what feels urgent moving.

Conversely, and infinitely more difficult, I submit we don’t completely disconnect from vacation while at home.  How can we routinely carve out time for other elements of life during work days that have grown exceedingly protracted with the onslaught of technology?   We think we’re expected to be available and responsive in the wee hours of the morning, during the lunch hour and deep into the night, but are we?  What would happen if we set boundaries around our time or allowed other activities to weave in and out?  Can we truly define and maintain our own balance?

Human being or human doing?  In order to thrive and find happiness we are both.  

Tiller

The secret ingredient, he tells me, is chicken poop. It’s late on a Sunday afternoon in June and we’ve finally found the time to put a few plants in the ground for some semblance of a vegetable garden.  He turns the soil in a small section of the bed, amending with precious fertilizer from the neighbor’s coop. He suggests I transplant the lettuce, an uninvited yet welcome guest who shows up perennially, and sometimes in the wrong place.  I’m reluctant to move it, given what I know about flowers and their aversion to an uprooting during the blooming season.  I’m not confident the plant will rebound this summer.

Each one of us sows an enormous amount of seeds in a lifetime.  Some of these seeds we deliberately and lovingly plant with full intention. We take responsibility to water, feed and nurture them as they grow.  We guide them as best we can, give attention and direction we hope will lead to a bumper crop.  We love them into the harvest, ripe to be plucked and shared with the world.

Other seeds we may not even be aware we are sowing.  The seed of perspective inspiring an adversary to see things differently, or the seed of a new idea sparked into fruition.  The seed of a question propelling another in a new direction. Or the seed of wisdom causing someone to reconsider a decision. It takes someone coming back to us saying, “Hey, you’ve changed my life,” for us to even know we planted a thought that grew, that we’ve made a difference.

This life is a journey.  We can’t begin to understand our true impact, how we affect every individual we come in contact with.  We can’t anticipate which seeds will germinate and grow and which will never make it out of the ground.  But that’s the beauty of it, and why we need to keep sowing.

 

Every New Year’s Eve we feel compelled to assess the last 525,600 minutes of our lives, but the reality is our work isn’t completed in calendar year blocks.  What if you thought about 2017 in terms of the seeds you’ve sown?  And the cultivating you’ve done to bring those seeds along?  I bet you’d feel richer.

I’m grateful I had the courage to sell my house this summer; I see my kids blossoming now that they are out on their own.  I’m grateful I made it my mission to meet talented individuals in my organization; I’m helping grow careers.  I’m grateful I gave myself permission to go on vacation this year, to spend time connecting with family and friends, immersed in the cultures of San Diego, New Orleans, Northern Wisconsin and Seattle.  I’m grateful for every time I stood on my yoga mat and told myself I am enough. I’m grateful for every time I decided to listen to someone who needed to talk. I’m grateful for the new life I’m creating with an amazing partner.

The transplanted lettuce didn’t make it, despite all the water and chicken poop.  But the transplanted me is thriving.  

Happy New Year!

Genesis

Just before check-out guests at this hotel find beside their beds a paper bag holding a hagenia bulb in soil.  Part of Bisate Lodge’s reforestation project, this is a gift they won’t take home. Hands cupped liked shovels they dig and blanket this sapling in the Rwandan earth, and through this act unwittingly assume ownership of the tree it will become. For now, the hotel employees instruct, they must return to see how it grows.

It’s more than just the beginning.  According to Oxford Dictionaries it’s “the origin or mode or formation of something”.  And it’s hard work, I don’t care what anyone says. Doors and websites for new companies open for business only after countless sleepless hours of blood, sweat and yes, sometimes tears. Expectant mothers slog into the delivery room at the nine-month mark anxious to free their bodies from the exhaustion of incubation. God put so much energy into creation even He had to rest on the seventh day. 

I become a gardener at my house on Vineyard Lane.  I choose this house specifically, with intention to raise my family and cultivate roots to spread deep and wide. I till not only my children, but our small patch of land. With a sunny, southern exposure in the front yard, I want textured purple, white and pink perennials.  Delicate, willowy gaura and heavenly scented lavender replace thorny brambleberry. Spiky-centered coneflowers make way for iris, allium and monarda.  Most plants yield fairly easily for me. But one tree holds on for dear life.  I try several times over the years to pull her out, but this tree’s roots gird her, unwilling to surrender to the hacking of my pernicious persistence. Eventually I give up.

Comfortable in this home where we all grew up, even though each of us wants to move on, none of us takes steps to actually do it. We are all stuck when I make the bold move to put the house on the market. With the sign in the front yard I feel pregnant, so focused on the frenzy of preparations, I think about little but the logistics leading up to the moment of change:  Closing the doors on the moving van is a lot like pushing the baby out of the womb.  What now?  I fail to scout within myself, underestimating my feelings in the aftermath; not only the brand new circadian rhythm to be created for the business of life, but the wringer of emotions to fitfully twist through.

The deeper our roots, the more difficult the uprooting. 

There are times over the course of the last (almost) four months where I feel like that tree in my front yard, so unwilling to allow myself to pulled out of the ground even though I am the one doing the pulling. But it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?  I achieved exactly what I set out to do in that home, richly and religiously fertilizing the soil with the stories of our lives, spreading roots of unimaginable depth and breadth. A life this abundant is jarring to dig up.

With the gift of perspective that a little time brings, I now wonder how we can become more like saplings, make ourselves easier to separate from the ground we’re calling home?  What if we recognized and accepted that new beginnings happen all the time, and allow ourselves to bloom wherever we find ourselves planted?  Changes we ask for, and circumstances we don’t ask for, throw us off the planned course and set us on a new and uncertain path.  We need to permit ourselves a little grace, acknowledging the magnitude of our emotions, granting ourselves the time we need to become comfortable in the new normal. 

New beginnings are hard enough, we make them harder when we fight ourselves. As human beings we are marvels in adaptability, resilience and resourcefulness. When we trust we can find ourselves no matter where we are, we undoubtedly will.

I drive into the old neighborhood periodically and look at my front yard. I do feel a tremendous sense of ownership for all I have cultivated. When spring comes again I will want to take a peek at my beloved and intoxicatingly fragrant Thalia daffodils. I wonder if the new owners will take on the crusade to remove that tree with the unforgiving will.  If they do, they are certainly in for a fight.  She’s a Rose of Sharon.

We are saplings

Forever uprooting

Into new beginnings.