Susurrant

“The nice thing about you is that I don't worry,  I just choose to believe.”  With these words I turn the handle on the door of a sanctum I’m certain I’ve never entered before, one I know I’ll never leave.

It can feel like we look for faith in our darkest moments, distraught when she can’t reveal herself. Yet, I wonder if faith doesn’t appear most powerfully in our brightest moments, when confidence abounds.

What if we were truly able to surrender, to look at everything in life through the lens of faith?  Imagine the burgeoning blaze.

Rapture

I’m late, having burned up precious time in a frantic search of all my “usual places” for the glittering wedding card I stow away months ago in anticipation of this day. I run into the room ready to ask Nate if he’ll give the zipper of my little black dress its final tug up my back, and all of a sudden I’ve got nothing but time for a smile when he says, unsolicited, “Wow, that looks nice.”  There is more and more evidence every day that my home is a breeding ground for good men.

This reception is beautiful, as it should be with a shining bride.  I’m at Table 8; it’s teeming with some of my favorite people, the beloved tribe I took to war with me on a tough client assignment, reunited to celebrate our colleague’s special day.  There were years when weddings felt to me like nothing but empty promises, telegraphing my own failed experience onto the sparkling couple before me.  Tonight is different, though, and it’s liberating to be clear on exactly why:  I know the unparalleled happiness that comes from being in love, because I’ve finally fallen in love with me.

   

“The most important person we can practice our loving on is ourselves,” explains the writer describing "How to be in a relationship when you're single".  The premise for her post is that so many of us single people hold ourselves back from living our lives waiting for the right person to come into it.  We think we can’t take that trip to Italy without a romantic partner by our side, or we can’t start that business without the financial security and emotional support of a spouse.

On the surface it may seem like there’s nothing new here.  The standard advice we singles get is to go out and do things you enjoy and you’ll meet someone.  What I read is a revelation because this author actually explains how to pick yourself up and get out the door.  Her words cause me to ponder the root of our paralysis:  Most of us are afraid to move forward alone because we haven’t figured out how to love ourselves.

 

In the aftermath of my divorce I looked at my friends differently.  While I have many, there were few I allowed to see me below the surface. These beautiful people would do anything for me, but I felt awkward asking. The flaw in my thinking has always been that my love is reserved for a few select people, that the only person it’s appropriate to get really close to is the man I’m spending my life with.  But the thing is, in order to get comfortable filling my relationship gap with friends instead of lovers I had to bring more of me to the friendships. 

Two years ago I started a collection of handmade cards with the intent to someday mass produce and market. Each card is named for the girlfriend who inspires the message.  No. 1 in the series is eponymous, asking the question “Did she find the courage to share her gifts from the power beneath her surface?  Or did she find the power beneath her surface when she had the courage to share her gifts?”  I still don’t know how to answer.

 

To move ahead alone, we need to have hard conversations with ourselves about what it is we’re afraid to tackle on our own.  We need to ask what we believe a partner brings to the table that supports us in taking the risks we contemplate.  It’s only when we have this information that we can start to look differently at how to fill the need absent of a significant other, enabling us to take on that goal or dream outright.

Finding the courage to live your life solo, tackling those audacious dreams anchored in your soul isn’t in itself what’s rewarding or needle-moving.  The real watershed comes with how our success transforms our feelings about ourselves.  When we believe we’re worthy and truly loveable we are able to open up and share with others all of what’s wonderful within us. When we love ourselves we become infinitely available to all of the individuals who cross our path. This is what makes it possible to cement unbreakable platonic bonds, to fall in love with another human being we choose to know deeply, intimately, exclusively.

It’s been seven years since I stood on the steps of the courthouse on a crisp, sunny morning smiling with the most pacific of sighs. I didn’t know it then, but I was embarking on a journey that would include meeting the love of my life. She’s been so worth the wait.

Boundless

Sinking deeper into the message outlining the presentation I’ll be giving in a few weeks my stomach unexpectedly churns.  The sediment of real fear I try my best to leave undisturbed stirs turbid as I think through what will be required of me to deliver a passionate message about my business with a prescribed number of slides cycling precisely every fifteen seconds regardless of whether I’m ready to move on to my next thought. What appears to be required to be great in this arena feels like more than I can bear.

My guts spill out on the table with a vulnerability most would never dream of revealing in the workplace, but he is a safe place.  After more than a year on the front line of the most arduous battles, I question whether I’ll do more damage than good for myself taking on yet another assignment in ambivalence. How ironic that I decide quickly success looks like not only a deck of the most forgiving slides I can create, but a willingness to stand naked on the stage revealing what the business looks like through my eyes.

What I love about him is he doesn’t belittle, bemoan or belabor my fear. He respects my feelings and allows me to express them. He doesn’t just attempt to convince me I’ll be great.  When he tells me we’re going to do this together he commits to showing me how to unleash the greatness he sees inside.  His generosity makes me want to cry.  And I do (but not until I get home).  He knows what a stretch this past year has been, but he also knows I’ve got more in me, and he can set it free.

If you’re serious about pursuing your dreams it means taking up residence in foreign places and figuring out how to feel at home. At first it’s lonely.  You’re unsure of who to trust.  You’re worried you’ll look silly or stupid pitching your idea or perspective to strangers who haven’t yet revealed where they stand. We grow weary watching countless individuals try us on only to discard us because we’re not quite the right fit.

 

But with the tenacity to share the very best of ourselves all the time those precious allies who recognize and appreciate our worth become known to us. And this is the precise place where we most need to surrender to our vulnerability, recognize this magic is a rare gift few are brave enough to receive.  For these precious few want nothing more than to sustain us when we’re battle-worn, pick us up when we fall, walk beside us when we’re at our worst, but only if we let them.

 

I’m beginning to realize these individuals don’t just support my dreams, they are my dreams.  They are the people who love me for who I am, who believe I’m capable of everything I’ve ever wanted to be.  They show me how to do what’s far more difficult than giving love could ever be; they show me how to receive love.

There’s more in all of us.  Who do you want on the journey with you to set it free?

Huzzah

As I read her message the ground I’m walking on becomes where I stand:  “The library would buy some of your work to add to our growing collection of ‘artists’ books’.”   Yes, that’s “buy” and my “work” in the same sentence.  Thanks to a dear friend who not so long ago landed her dream job in the stacks of a private university and our digitally connected world, the woman responsible for curating this collection is able to fall in love with the work I donate to The Brooklyn Art Library and request to purchase more like it.  I’m still pinching myself three days later.

The idea sends my head spinning with new possibilities.  And so I begin to research this genre. According to The Artists’ Press, “Artists books are limited edition art works that are produced by an artist or by a collective and that have aspects of handmade work in them.”  It’s my enigma of perpetual struggle finally solved; I’m perplexed by how I might put my art into the hands of many without surrendering its weathered fidelity to the polished precision of mass production. Have I stumbled on nirvana?

Here’s the thing about going after our dreams:  When we’re brave enough to put what’s buried within our souls out into the world, no matter how impractical or implausible it may seem, the world finds a way to receive it.  Exactly as we intend it to be because that’s what makes it ours.

The deal is sealed for me when I click on this writer’s piece about the value of journaling. He quotes Pulitzer Prize winning author  David McCullough, who says “if you want to become the voice of your generation, write a journal entry every day and then gift it to your local university library at the end of your life.”  All at once I know who I want to be.

 

A voice of my generation; and it starts now. 

Pellucid

It’s a study in light I’m enchanted to discover as I switchback through the handful of desert trails.  The same pieces are changing as the sun sinks in the western sky from late afternoon into the gloaming.  When I sign up for the 4 – 8 PM time slot to tour the Chihuly in the Garden exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, I can’t imagine how I will spend four hours here, yet I learn it’s possible to spend four times four hours here:  What’s illustrated so exquisitely across these 240 minutes in the desert sky is how everything changes in a magically compressed time lapse; I’m really never looking at the same thing twice.

 

What I find remarkable is how these massive, yet intricately shaped blown glass pieces of art nestled among the blooming cacti wax into prominence as daylight wanes, relegating the garden’s signature flora to uniquely, and equally beautiful, shaped silhouettes against glorious colored light emanating from their refulgent crystalline structure.

When I finally get my fill with 117 new photos, I belly up to the bar to dine.  It takes all of thirty seconds for the bartender to ask me about my shots, whipping out his own tablet to share the pictures he’s captured over the life of the exhibit.  Turns out this guy is an artist, mixing drinks at the garden’s surprisingly upscale restaurant to fund his true passions:   Photography and bringing art to kids.

He experiments with light and motion, his images selling for $100 each, printed on Costco photo paper, housed in Walmart frames to maximize his margin. He reminds me of the artist portrayed in this short video, "Silver & Light", which both ignites and breaks my heart as this man nearly breaks himself in his quest to create massive original photographs with the world’s largest camera, which he’s made himself.

 

These strangers are lodestones beholden to a calling, drawing me in to absorb their stories of relentless persistence and grit in the name of creative passion; the pursuit so acutely personal; the stakes so gut-wrenchingly high; voices undulating with effervescence in times of success and utter despair and self-loathing when confronted with failure.  They make unfathomable sacrifices, seemingly reckless choices.  They prioritize their dreams above all else. I’m steeping in a jealousy and awe I can’t quite resolve. I want this for myself.

We’re driven by the force that creates us, an eternal flame at our very core, impossible to extinguish, smoldering until we’re prepared to stoke our true selves into being.  Like Chihuly’s artwork makes itself brilliantly known, exploding when the lights go down in the desert, we too can set the world on fire when we decide we’re enough, worthy of becoming who we’re meant to be. 

Are you ready to turn your lights on?   

Oculus

He’s smiling as he tells me he feels like he has a new lease on life, a fresh start.  I smile with him.  I know this terra firma he’s standing on. He’s been on a sort of forced sabbatical and now that he feels like himself again, better than himself in some ways, he says he needs to decide if he wants to continue on the same path or try something new.  Like most of us when faced with this circumstance, he questions what else he can do.  Without even thinking I correct him.  “It’s not what can you do,” I say, “it’s what do you want to do?”

 

What strikes me as particularly telling are the words we choose.  In a litany of self-imposed limitations and imaginary roadblocks that feel extraordinarily real, we couch our fear of possibility. We do this to ourselves so convincingly, and with the word “can’t” we talk ourselves into believing we’re not able. Yet locked deep inside is that thing we’d love to be doing, along with all the ability we’ll ever need to do it.

Maybe it’s a way to shield ourselves from the humiliation of trying and failing or from perceived judgment by others.  It seems, though, like an odd sort of self-protection, especially when we think about what we’re keeping ourselves from.  Our wildest dreams, whether they include people we want to be with or work we want to accomplish, are places where we feel most like ourselves, where we imagine we’ll be happy, pacific and sated. Why would we let anything get in the way of that?  Is it possible the judgment we fear when we weigh the pros and cons of making big change comes from ourselves?  And so we use our obligations and responsibilities as excuses to stay in a safe dome of practicality, stability, and acceptability we’ve built around ourselves, ever cognizant of the escape hatch shining high above us if only we could fly.

When it comes to our lives, most of us are accustomed to playing small.  Truth is we’re bigger than that, better than that. There will always be reasons not to follow your dreams; don’t you owe it to yourself to make sure you’re not clipping your own wings?

Exhume

Every few months or so I remind myself (vehemently) I’m still not interested in on-line dating.  To many who want to help me find that special someone, I’m sure it seems like I have more excuses than one person could ever conjure up. I’m well aware of how lame I sound when I laugh off farmersonly.com, but really?  I can’t bring myself to fire up any one of the dating pool search engines, and when I read this blog post by Seth Godin about the difference between search and discovery, I think I understand why.

  

“Just google it,” is what I tell my kids all the time.  Anything you’d ever want to know about anything can be found via the bright, shimmering, flashing links of your browser.  More than once I’ve been heard saying I’m more concerned with raising resourceful boys who know how to find information rather than memorize it. It’s all at our fingertips, sometimes even too available.  In fact, as big a fan as I am, I’ve always felt the internet to be a little bit like Las Vegas; loud, boisterous, in-your-face access, more choices than you ever thought possible, yours for the click of a mouse.

 

Searching implies you know exactly what it is you want.  This works really well when you’re talking black platform heels, the lyrics to “Devil Town”, an airline ticket to San Francisco or a recipe for chocolate gingerbread.  But not so well when you want fulfilling employment, a charming vacation house on the beach or a boyfriend.  While we might think we know what we want in these cases, we’re often surprised when we happen upon an ideal job, cottage or relationship that would have never made the cut had we stayed within the boundaries of our search. Some things just need to be discovered, felt, experienced, and no amount of discrete keywording guarantees a superior result.

This is where discovery comes in.   Discovery is finding that special something or someone you didn’t even know you wanted or needed. It’s what happens when we throw our lists away and just live life.  We all think we know exactly what it is we want or need.  This I’m sure is at least part of the reason why we’re a population addicted to the hunt, a society that believes a search engine can be applied successfully to absolutely anything.

Maybe search is a way to stay in our safe places where we can be certain we’ll never choose anything or anyone too far outside the boundaries of acceptability, compatibility or reason we’ve subconsciously set for ourselves?  It makes me question if we search relentlessly because we have so little faith in discovery. 

Or is it we have so little faith in ourselves to recognize and seize what’s made for us when it appears in our path?