ALCHEMY OF WORDSBLOG |
|
Makers Are Heroic.  Photo credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls Let’s talk about the perceptibly impossible task of juggling life with art. The elusive balance between art on one side of the equation. And family. And money. And other jobs. And difficult kids. And countless pulls and tugs of meetings and school and bills and doctors and oil changes and shopping for health insurance and pulling weeds and cleaning the garage and shopping for clean food and paying attention to the cyclone of disastrous political shenanigans and the daily researching of a hundred different things for as many reasons. Of course, there’s also the sway of whiskey. Which sometimes brings gold but more often is just a waste of time and calories. And then there’s sex and what it is and what is could be and what it should be and when it will come again and whether you did all the things you should before during and after it. There’s also the finding time (and energy) for it. Still there are innumerable other unreasonable demands on your time and energy. And maybe I shouldn’t even mention sleep and vacations. These and other superhuman tasks we are just supposed to figure out. To make good art requires us to know and feel our emotions. To bear our souls while we also bare them. To be vulnerable enough to lay out hearts out on the table for the world to see. And then be strong enough to remain standing if they are judged too harshly. We are charged with this work and more. Like holding the light with one hand, while stitching the world together with the other. We must be shape-shifters. We must walk in multiple worlds, serve as ambassadors to each one, remember the different languages and customs here and there, and not completely crack the fuck up. If we succeed, we are gods. If not, we’re dreamers and castoffs. Fledgling humans who couldn’t make it in the world where the grown-ups live. We must simultaneously love the world, and also know when to tell it to fuck-off. So we can do our work. We must resist being thrown off kilter by the siren call of mediocrity. We must question everything and still have the confidence to follow our own voices, to be focused enough not lose them in the crowd. And you probably know, the pull of the crowd is strong. I don’t just mean wanting to fit in or be liked. I mean the ever-rushing current of the modern world. I’m not saying I have definitive answers to any of these riddles. My best advice is to do like Same Phillips says and no matter what happens, hold on to your voice. * * * This is one of 66 essays in the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. The book is available here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0 Subscribe to Substack for more fun with words: https://thomaslloydqualls.substack.com/
0 Comments
Your life becomes the shape of the days you inhabit. -John O'Donohue  Photo Credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls To a Foodie, you are what you eat. Buddhists say you are what you think. And for Fashionistas, you are what you wear. To me, you are the stories you tell. The stories you watch, the stories you read, the stories you live.
If this is true, then if I watch too many movies, or read too many books, or if I'm too involved with pop culture, will I lose touch with reality? Put another way, will I create a false reality, one that’s not really mine? I know people who live in these fantasy worlds, where they are more involved in the lives of imaginary characters than in their own. Living other people’s lives instead of theirs. One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead. - Oscar Wilde These questions lead to another: What is reality, anyway? I remind myself of the importance of myth. I remember the vital purpose of imagination. And I resolve that the retelling of human stories is essential to our humanness. Before there were movies and books, there were stories. Usually told by elders around fires, these stories wove together the people and the land, the wind and the sun, the animals and the rain. The stories were their lives, just as the rivers were their blood. There was no separation. In modern life, most of our storytelling is done through movies and books (also television, theatre, opera, video games, and urban legends). Though any stories that people tell, however they tell them -- on video, paper, canvas, or clay -- they all tell us something, not just about the subjects they depict, but about ourselves. Where our lives begin and the stories end is perhaps not so important. Because the stories are really pieces of us. Reflections. Living metaphors. By allowing these stories to blur the edges of reality a little, we may come to see ourselves more clearly. When having a smackerel of something with a friend, don’t eat so much that you get stuck in the doorway trying to get out. -Winnie the Pooh Stories -- and the myths they represent -- are great, that is to say, until we get stuck in one. Like good books, we are meant to finish one and pick up the next. Not to read the same chapter, page, sentence over and over. One way to break out of a story is to go see something of the rest of world. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I took a months-long backpacking trip through India. I was stuck reading the same story and decided there were no books in my part of the world that could tell me anything new. So I took off in search of buried treasure in the East, to a place where ancient treasure is reported to be hidden. I put aside television, movies, and everything I thought I knew about myself and my place in the world and just went in search of a new story. It was transformational in ways I may never fully digest. I did find treasure there, though not quite the ones I set out to find. Among the stories which India told me was the one where I needed to go to India to figure out that I didn't need to go to India. And I couldn’t have known that any other way. Because familiarity blinds us to these kind of simple truths. There are billions of universes inside every one of us. We carry them in our blood, our breath, our DNA. And in those universes, every particle of every star, every atom of every moon, each drop of water, has its own history to uncover, its own path to travel, its own story to tell. Each one unique. Each one waiting to be discovered. But you have to know how to listen, and you have to know how to look. You have to put down that same book you’ve been reading, turn off the reruns, mix up some new paints. You have to pull out some fresh paper and pick up a new pen. Let me know what you find. I love a good story. * * * This is one of 66 essays in the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. The book is available here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0 Subscribe to Substack for more fun with words: https://thomaslloydqualls.substack.com/  Photo Credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls We are allowed to grieve, even for things not right for us. The wrong career path, the faithless lover, the secure job that doesn’t feed us, the accidentally deleted chapter, the abusive parent, the lottery ticket that blew away. We are allowed to grieve our youthful recklessness, our wavering self-confidence, our blissful ignorance, our will to live. In other words, we are allowed to be human. A while back I turned down the job offer of a lifetime. A position in that would provide two paychecks a month, health benefits, and retirement, for something I’m already skilled and experienced in doing. Why would any reasonable, rational person do this? The answer is that no person in that frame of mind would. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have good reasons. Not the least of which is: I need to write. It is that simple. Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls. So said Joseph Campbell. How many of us truly believe in this? How many act upon that belief? Do I believe? On good days. Do I act on that belief? Well, in that case I did. In truth, I have been for years. Every time I put words to paper. So far though, most of those doors I’ve had to kick down or pry open. I’m not whining. Ok, I’m whining a little. I understand that most writers work in the dark, with mostly self-manufactured hope. Which is known to wane from time to time. Unless you are one of those blissfully self-confident types. Which probably means you’re not a writer. So forget that last part. As a writer, I believe in a few irrational things. One is that I can make a decent living as an artist. Despite society’s reluctance to do things like fund the arts or pay for books and music, I believe we still live in a world where the gift of art is essential to our lives. Also, I still I grieve. For the opportunity I passed up, for the simplicity and stability it would have offered. And I also know myself well enough to understand that I am simply unable to cut the rope on all my head-banging-against-walls aspirations. On the writer’s shack in my backyard. On becoming living proof of the ability to live our dreams. We cannot see into the future to determine what will be, what would have been. We cannot see into past lives to recapture what we learned there. Even looking backwards into this life, we are unable see clearly. Our vision is clouded by the lens of perception. Blake said, If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. But absent the aid of mescaline or DMT, this is a difficult state to achieve. What are we to do then, those of us so unavoidably fixed in our artistic inclinations? I see plenty of ridiculously talented artists around. Those who work the scene constantly, are connected and knowledgeable, and still must bartend or pull espresso in order to pay their rents. There must be a way to rebuild our communities, our society, our nation-state, our world, so the bankers and defense contractors have to bus tables on the side. And the artists of the world, who enrich our lives so much more, could just focus on their art. True, it isn’t just about money. Money, though, is an undeniable fact of life. Money is energy, a spirit made flesh. Like air or food, we rely upon it for our existence. If we had a thought to completely eschew money, we wouldn’t have incarnated here. We’d have stayed in the unbroken realm of light. Because we are here, we agreed at some point to take on this messy state of being. We agreed to ride the ever-shifting balance between the mud and the rays of light. Wearing this skin means we not only experience joy and happiness, but doubt, grief, and sorrow. One of the tricks to being human is to master the alchemy of turning these states of being into beauty. If we want our lives to be filled with beauty, we must be brave enough to create it, generous enough to pay for it, compassionate enough to support it, and bold enough to see our vision through to fruition. When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. –Paulo Coelho Despite my occasional frustration, I still believe. And I still grieve. And this is the clay from which art is made. _______________________
************
This is an excerpt from the Nautilus Award-winning book Happiness Is An Imaginary Line in the Sand. If you’d like to own the whole collection, it is available here. Focus on What You Love.  photo credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: Your job is to find beauty.
Yes, your life is messy. Yes, your job is stressful. Yes, your romantic partnership is hanging by a thread. Yes, traffic sucks. Yes, your children won’t listen. Or stop talking back. Or stop crying. Or stop leaving Legos and bouncy balls in the middle of the kitchen floor where you’ll step on them in the dark and damn near kill yourself. Or them. Yes, the laundry is overflowing. Yes, you forgot to water your plants. Again. Yes, you blew the deadline. Yes, it will be another year before you can apply again. Yes, the thing you wanted more than anything in the whole universe didn’t happen. Or at least it didn’t happen to you. Yes, on top of your personal crazy world of red lights, tax forms, relationship disasters, and impossible financial obligations, all over the world people are doing terrible things to other people. And to animals. And to the planet. Which, as it turns out, is the same thing as doing those things to people and animals. But believe it or not, there is something you can do about it: Buy art. If you don’t believe me, just listen to Picasso, he knows: Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. - Picasso Sure, you say. I’ll just forget about all the world’s troubles, and my own, stick my head in the sand mandala, and hide. Well, okay. That’s better than a hundred other things you could do. But I don’t see it as just hiding. I see it as one of the more powerful things you can do to change the world. What the hell am I talking about? I’ll tell you what. Actually, I’ll let Anaïs Nin tell you, because she said it quite nicely: We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. What I mean, in case you’re still scratching your head, is that your life is the sum total of all the things you focus on in a day. Which is why I keep saying your job is to find beauty. Which means your job is also to buy that piece of art that embodies the beauty you seek. Unless, of course, you want the terrorists to win. Then just sit at home and look at your blank walls, worrying about that missed deadline and your lover who won’t call. Still not convinced? Here’s a few more reasons: It’s empowering. You see something you like. Something that makes you smile. Something that lights up something somewhere near your chest area, your brain area, or maybe even your loins. You have either some money in the bank, your pockets, or on a credit card. You make an executive decision to use that money to buy that thing that makes you smile. And BAM, you own it. Just like that. You get to take it home and put it up any damn place you like. Artists could use the cash. Seriously. Artists live by the mantra of not just finding beauty but creating it. And they generally make less money than school teachers. Sometimes a lot less. If you want the world to be better, it starts with finding beauty, and it flows from there to helping its creator pay the rent. Support what you love. There are many things to be upset about, many things to rail against, to protest, and to fight. And many of those fights are noble. And it is a far more powerful act to find out what you love and support it. That is the best way I know to make the world a better place. It’s an affirmation of abundance. When you buy art, you’re telling the universe a thing or two. Including that you are confident of your place in it, and that you are worthy of its beauty. You are casting a vote for what’s important. And you are doing something to counter the message of the mass-produced goods culture that surrounds you. It has a story. I don’t know about you, but I want the things I have to have a story. Not to be cold, machine-produced duplicates. To have a life of their own. We all have stories to tell. Countless stories, in truth. And that’s exactly what art does. No matter what kind of art it is. It tells stories. What comes around goes around. When you start focusing on beauty. When you invest in it, feed it, and nurture it. Then something magical starts to happen. It brings its friends. And more and more beauty just starts showing up at your door, in your car, on a walk, or at work. Maybe even in bed. So go ahead. Buy some art. You’ll be happy. And the world will be happier, too. **** This is one of 66 essays in the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. The book is available here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0 Your Happiness Depends Upon How You Are Looking.  Photo Credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls Just stop it, already. You know what I’m talking about. You, telling that same old story about how impossible things are, how unfair. The story of how the whole world is rigged, and not in your favor. The story of inequality, injustice, oppression, corruption, lies. The story of why it is understandable that you are where you are. I’ve said it before, this world is imperfect. In fact, in many ways, it’s down right broken. But that doesn’t mean it’s not also beautiful. Your job is not to fix all the problems. Your job is not even to point them out or to explain them. Your job is to find beauty. Because it is out there. And it is in here. It is everywhere you look. And it is everywhere you don’t look. When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see. -John O’Donohue Practice what you preach. Better yet, stop preaching. And just be. No one wants to listen to preaching anyway. At least not for very long. And not over and over again. Even if they agree with you. If you find you are well suited to repairing a small piece of the world that is broken, then by all means, go ahead. We need your services. We need fixers and healers of all shapes and sizes and colors. But just in case I wasn’t clear, I’ll say it again. Your job is to find beauty. Your job is to seek it out, acknowledge it, share it, nurture it, photograph it, paint it, sculpt it, write about it, draw its name in the sand, scatter its petals over the ocean, light up the night sky with its fire. As an artist, your job is also to create beauty. To be it. That is the birthright of each and every one of us. To acknowledge our own beauty. To become it. To look beneath the surface, to brush away the dust, to shake out the rugs. We have stacked so much rubbish on top of ourselves, that our true beauty, and the beauty of everyone and everything are buried under our prejudices, our beliefs, our pages and pages of worn out stories. Dig yourself out. Brush yourself off. Throw away the never-ending manuscript of why you can’t. The world is neither this thing nor that thing. It is not our ideas of how it is or of how it should be. The world is the world. Like love, the world contains all possibilities. All darks and lights, all ups and downs, all rainbows of doubt and joy, hardship and pleasure. But I want you to forget all that. Your job is to find beauty. * * * * This is an excerpt from "Your Job Is to Find Beauty" - one of 66 essays in the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. The book is available here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0 Subscribe to Substack for more fun with words: https://thomaslloydqualls.substack.com/  photo credit: thomas lloyd qualls I should start by saying that I’m not someone prone to writer’s block. In general, I have more ideas than I know what to do with. And more words wanting to get out of my head and onto the paper (or you know, screen) than I generally have time to lead them there. Even as I scribble out this confession, I have no shortage of creative projects on my metaphoric plate. Still, if I’m honest with you (and myself), I’ve been having a little trouble lately, well, writing. That’s not exactly true. The real truth is I’m having a truckload of trouble writing. I simply can’t seem to usher the words anywhere near to where they need to go. And even when I do, I find myself looking around the room for whoever wrote the banal scratch I’m staring at. And then, more often than not, I close my notebook and go on with my day as if the very world itself were not collapsing around me. Now, for most people, that would be enough. But actually the terror does not end there. At the same time I’m engaged in this mortal struggle with words, I’m also slightly out of my depth on several other projects: (1) researching a technical subject I know almost nothing about for my next novel; (2) working on material for a non-fiction book and companion workshop; and (3) developing a multi-faceted podcast series. And when I’m not doing one of these stretching exercises, I’m probably watching a master class to evolve my craft, researching one of the hundreds of things I still don’t know about marketing and audience-building, or falling down the rabbit hole of social media. Oh yeah, I’ve also got a law practice to run and a bright young boy who stays up nights thinking of ways to keep me on my toes. As you might guess, on any given day I can find myself feeling less than competent about any or all of these components. And really, all the advice out there on life hacking doesn’t help. Those seemingly innocuous self-help bites just reinforce the feeling that I have no idea what I’m doing. Admittedly, writing is not like most other jobs. It’s prone to a unique kind of frustration. Not the least of which is that there have never been any guarantees that the ideas or the words or your focus will all show up when they are supposed to, in any kind of meaningful order. But that is also what makes writing kind of magical. The thing I’m starting to believe is that the harder I try to make any of these things happen, the more I chase the fickle cats of progress or achievement, the more I think I really need to do or be some thing, the more these things become water between my fingers. There seems to be an inverse magnetic effect. I find that when I loosen my grip a little, however, things start to shift. When I practice walking, instead of just getting somewhere, then the view expands. And then what appears on the horizon as I wander these tangled paths of a creative life looks like a hidden meadow, a place where the trees offer quiet shade and the grass wants nothing more than for me to just come lie down. And so I am learning to walk without expectation of where I’m going to arrive. And to realize how many unnecessary things I’ve been carrying on this long journey. And to set them down. *** This essay is one of 66 from the Gold Nautilus Award Winning collection Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. You can get your own copy of the book here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0 To Write is to Live Inside a Dream.  photo credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls This is not the sort of thing I do much, talk about writing. Unless you count one of the main characters in my first novel, or several essays I've written, or unless someone asks and I know they are not just making small talk, or conversations I have over dinner with friends, or if I just feel like talking. But other than that, almost never. I dance around words. I pretend to hide from sentences. I tease turns of phrase. It takes me days to pick up a pen. I am a writer. I want to tell you how some days I'm taller than buildings, can stop speeding bullets with my fingertips, carry babies from burning houses, and write my way out of anything and into anything else. Before you make coffee. But it isn't always that way. Not for me. Probably not for you. Not for anyone else I know. How can I tell you what it means to be a writer? Imagine you knew nothing of science, how would you describe air or what it feels like to breathe? How would you explain to someone from a dry planet that water is wet, or show the colorblind how the sky is blue. I scribble masterpieces on matchbooks. I collect sentence fragments like fairy dust. I watch the world through my own kaleidoscope eyes. I am a writer. To write is to live inside a dream. More than this, it is to be the dreamer and the dream. To live in a limitless world of seamless dimensions. Writing and dreaming share a common language. Both speak in metaphors, the only suitable tongue for this extraordinary experience called life. I awake from a world of limitless possibilities inside a world of narrow boundaries. I scramble to scribble down the memories of the other side. You and I are metaphors. Along with all we see and do. There is no explanation for life beyond the dreamworld, beyond what we can learn from poetry and from Zen masters. This world is an illusion, a fact we forget again and again and again. Buckminster Fuller reminded us, There are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. Think about that. To write is to fully embrace the world where the illusion does not matter, a world where things like love defiantly reign supreme. Because love is not the opposite of hate, of fear, of oppression, or inhibition. Love contains all these things and more. This is what Rilke was talking about when he said, Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. To write is to begin to know. To know is to begin to become. Once you lose the illusion that love, good, righteousness are on one side, and whatever other thing you can imagine is on the other, then your ears start to open. Then your eyes start to hear. Then you may begin to write. But make no mistake, that's what it is, a beginning. The dreams of our greatness, they come and they go. The moments of fearless are fickle and slow. Maybe you'll read these words and either nod or shake your head. Depending on the sun or the moon or the tides. But it may or may not change your world. Because the truth is that there are days we all wonder how we got here. Days we stumble, days filled with fear. Days we look around at the room, wonder who will find us out and how soon. These things, these thoughts, these soul-crushing doubts, by the way, are how we know we're on the right track. Without them, without a sense of humility, without some acknowledgement of grace, of magic, of the muse, of the 10,000 hours of practice required, we'll never really inhabit this world. But that's a story for another day. Today we're talking about writing. Because there is almost nothing better. As Bukowski once reminded us, you will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. I spent the better part of ten years writing my first novel, Waking Up at Rembrandt’s. I say that like I did nothing but sit in a room for ten years and write that novel. That isn’t true, of course. Back then I did not have a small child dependent upon me for his livelihood. But I did have a day job, a penchant for travel, a taste for good wine, an epicurean addiction, and when I wasn't suffering a bout of espresso-induced insomnia, a love of sleep, each of which take up a lot of time. The thing is, a writing life is neither glamorous nor easy. And yet, if it is in your veins, no amount of transfusions of normal life will help. So if you are called by these words, I invite you to let go of your resistance and join me. You won’t regret it. As Bukowski also reminded us, the gods wait to delight in you. A word is a magical thing.  photo credit Thomas Lloyd Qualls Young children are not that interested in books without pictures. No matter how good the story. When we are very young, a word on a page, by itself, is just not that interesting. We need pictures to make the words more engaging. As we grow older, our stories also grow, and there are fewer and fewer pictures. As this happens, another kind of magic takes hold. The words on the page begin to mean something. And we start to participate in the story. We bring our imagination to the page and create our own pictures. This is because a word is a magical thing. And the reading of words is actually an act of creation. As readers, we get to participate in the art itself coming to fruition like no other art form. We are brought into the world made by the writer and get to do our own co-creating while we’re there; completing the circle of art in a way wholly unique to the written word. Please don’t misunderstand me. I love the visual arts. Words and pictures have long worked together. And they’ve enjoyed a beautiful working relationship. I’ve just noticed that lately the relationship has become a little lopsided. As if there’s been a regression of sorts. At least as far as the internets are concerned. The truth is, we’ve gotten a bit lazy. We can’t be bothered to write out the full words for things. And in order to get us to read something, there needs to be a picture attached. It’s like we’re all in kindergarten again, and we’re easily bored. Which is a shame. Not just because I’m a writer. But because the word is fundamental to our understanding of everything in our world. Including pictures. Imagine describing a picture without words. Now imagine seeing a picture and not attaching words to it in your own head. And the thing is, understanding is pretty important. Because mostly what we understand is so vastly outweighed by what we don't understand that if we understood only that simple truth it would blow our minds. And maybe it would lead to things like humility, compassion, and even curiosity. In order to understand our world a little better, we need to exercise our brains a little more. Reading is a little like yoga for our minds. And who among us couldn’t stand to do a little more yoga, right? Here's something really crazy. New studies show [I promise this isn't a gum commercial] that our brains might actually see words as pictures. Did you hear that? At least some of us see words as pictures. If that’s so, then putting pictures with them is redundant. I guess what I’m saying is: In a world that is already increasingly disconnected -- and almost unbearably truncated by letters and numbers that are supplanting words -- to continue to act as if words themselves are not important is to further distance ourselves from each other and from our natural environment. It’s not just that always supplying the picture is too much spoon-feeding. Nor simply that it doesn’t allow us the space to create our own worlds with words. It isn’t even that it makes us lazy. It’s that it also deprives us of the raw beauty of words. And beauty, as you know, is just about everything. So bring on the written word, the spoken word, the poetry slams, the calligraphy pens, the handmade paper, the ragged journals, and the tattered book covers holding so many precious gems. Language existed before the written word. But the written word built bridges for us that language alone could not. Let’s get creative and figure out how to lift up the word again. In all its art forms. In all its glory. In all its ravenous beauty. After all, if a picture is worth a thousand words, why not let the picture speak for itself. And set the words free again.  Photo Credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls Words contain questions. I know that sounds funny. But it’s true. While words give us answers like who we are talking about or where they are or how much they’ve had to drink, they also contain questions, like what did he mean by that? In fact, the very word what could be a question or an answer. Words can tell you what she was wearing and also leave you wondering, what’s going to happen next? Pick a word, any word, and I'll bet you'll see what I mean. Here's a random list: light, bar, clock, sort, kiss, swim, trace. Are these words verbs or nouns or adjectives? [It’s time to sort the laundry. –or- He’s the sort of guy you don't want to date.] Are they commands or descriptions? [Trace that call! –or- She left only a trace of perfume her lover's torso.] Are they meant to be friendly or foreboding? [It was their first kiss. –or- That’s the kiss of death.] I could go on... Everyday we use hundreds of words without really thinking about their meaning, without even acknowledging the questions. Take the word illegitimate, a word that -- until very recently -- was widely used to indicate a child born of two people who were not married. To me, the unspoken question in this word is, Really? Consider the phrase Happy Holidays. It seems innocent enough, a straightforward gesture of goodwill. Apparently though, there are many questions lurking in those two simple words. Enough of them to evoke complaints and pleadings for us to use the words Merry Christmas instead, so as not to exclude Christ in the season’s greetings. But Happy Holidays is meant to be inclusive not exclusive. It is meant to enfold the Christian celebration along with many others. The best example of a word that comes with questions is love. I think Howard Jones has my back on this when he asks, What is love, anyway? The question is not merely lyrical. Love is so vast that it defies explanation. More than this, it begs for questions. Questions which force us to stop and pay attention. To examine ourselves and our actions, our thoughts and feelings, our preconceived notions. Love asks us to reach beyond our ideas of ourselves in order to find bigger answers. We give honor to words, to ideas, to beliefs, to our common humanity, by acknowledging the things that lie outside our understanding and experience. These questions hidden in words are born of the things that awaken our curiosities, things that form questions on our lips, our hearts, our minds (and possibly other parts of our anatomies). Rigidity is good for things like dams, for objects which need to hold things back, to constrict and restrain. Trees, grasses, flowers, rivers, birds, minds, and spirits, these things need to flow and to bend. Let’s acknowledge the questions in our words and ideas of the world. Let’s embrace them and take time to discover their secrets. Or as the master once put it: Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. -Rainer Maria Rilke Be well everyone. Stay in your magic.  photo credit: thomas lloyd qualls The universe is an endless paradox of limited visibility. (How's that for an opening line.) Too often we believe that only this or that can be true. That there is such a thing as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That people can only be with us or against us. From our flawed judicial system to the daily conversations inside and outside our heads, we live in an increasingly thin slice of reality. One in which people, things, and ideas are categorized, stereotyped, and affixed with childish labels like right or wrong, good or bad. Where, in the name of a loving God, people hate one another. What all these thoughts and conclusions have in common is the arrogance of believing that the universe is knowable. And that the thinkers of all these thoughts know all there is to know. Think about that. Think about what this mix of certainty and arrogance requires. The internet both connects us and keeps us separated from one another. Not just because we are glued to our phones instead of physically interacting. It also allows us to be insular in our associations and narrow in our exposure. Yes, to a certain extent this has always been true. We have long subscribed to the newspapers and magazines that fit our worldview, favored one news channel over another, and stayed steadfastly true to one political party. Technology has simply amplified those tendencies. While also allowing us to avoid anything like an actual conversation. It’s easy to hate on a certain segment of America for not seeing things the way we do. But there’s also a kind laziness in that behavior. And a measure of hypocrisy. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve all become willfully ignorant to things we find unpalatable or inconvenient, and those blond spots allow us to be unquestionably sure that our conclusions are the right ones. The marketplace of ideas thrives when people are talking. To each other. Not just to the choir. I'm not talking about opening the corral gate so free speech can lead us to the truth. (See paragraph one.) I'm talking about expanding our ideas (of ourselves and each other), our possibilities, and our humanity. Like never before, we need to step out of our bubbles and breathe fresh air. We need to understand that America is every gradation of white, black, brown, and orange. We are also young, old, gay, straight, transgender, strong, feeble, smart, dumb, courageous, and confused. If we look around and all our friends are the same color, religion, or end of the political spectrum, we are part of the problem. We must go out and mingle outside our comfort zones. And while I’m not advocating we go out and make a token gay friend so we can say we’re not bigots, why not start with finding that one friend. And then have some real conversations with them. Conversations that are based upon curiosity and not knowing. In fact, here's my recipe for a happier future: Take one part your ideas and add several parts of the ideas from others around you that you mostly agree with but have not fully explored. Next add another handful ideas you've heard of, but are not so sure about. Blend together and let sit. Once settled, slowly add equal parts ideas you've never heard of and those you think you disagree with. Stir vigorously and put in the oven at low temperature for as long at it takes for you to understand that alone, your ideas are just flour, with maybe a little water sprinkled on top. In order for them to be truly interesting, they need to be combined with other flavors and textures. Once your batter has turned into something with more substance, remove from the oven and let cool. Then invite over your closest friends, some people you know, but don't really hang out with, then add a few strangers, and those who do not share your political, ethnic, religious, gender, or sexual identity. Slice up the concoction. Set out the plates and glasses. Pour some lemonade, open some wine, and start talking. And listening. Be well everyone. Stay in your magic. |
Archives
May 2023
Categories |
RSS Feed