And for those who think they don’t belong…
Gran’s presence was warm and kind. Being beside her in the kitchen, I felt safe. Was I an irritating presence, right there at her elbow? Mum suggested I go play with my cousins, but Gran never did. The aunts just wanted to gossip without children around.
The word ‘mis-fit’ bothers me. It’s not a human being’s misfitting that’s the problem, it’s the odd shape they’re meant to squeeze into or rattle around in.
It’s important we know this, even if later in life. I suspect we come in knowing, and because we have no language for it and so much else crowds in, the truth of who we are gets forgotten.
Self-knowledge has always been a quest. The Grail quest was for the true Self – the prize. And the Self has a purpose; one’s raison d’etre.
Naturally, Giorgio Morandi’s was painting. With only a few days left of his life, he told friend and art historian Roberto Longhi “If only you knew, dear Longhi, how very much I want to work… I have new ideas I want to develop.”
Achieving the fullness of the dream may not happen in our own eyes. A lifetime creating his extraordinary ouvré, what more could Morandi have done?
More.
I want more too, don’t you? And in western culture, we tend not to count all we’ve been given – the gifts, the time, the resources – and complain, circumnavigating what really matters, caught in a net of habits that numb fears rather than face them. Purpose is on the other side of all that.
If they don’t kill you, accidents and serious illnesses stop and confront us with time to contemplate, re-evaluate, re-vision and remember our ‘true north.’
I like ‘true north’ because it’s about direction rather than destination. Of course, not everyone buys into changing tack and what might seem like starting again.
But to be curious about what you’d love and go beyond what you know, leads to unexpected discoveries; can lead to one’s raison d’etre.
I’d often dismissed what I would love as unimportant. There came a time though, when I realised different actions not only felt imperative, they were essential.
And I discovered that I never tire of creating contemplative spaces with my paintings, ceramics and flowers. Making installations is my way of translating what I felt sitting for hours in Seeking Stillness, an unusual exhibition at Boston’s MFA. And the Rothko Chapel.
Unexpected gifts that support my raison d’etre, contemplative art practices leave no space in my head for worrying. It’s as if my thinking shifts from channel pazzo (crazy) to channel pace (peace)!
Ego bullies, pushes, chastises and criticises. There’s a Sufi teaching that really helped me understand the difference in the inner voices: The heart helps us carry out our purpose; heart is ‘workhorse’ for the Soul. However, ego fights the Soul for the heart. Soul does not fight, but watches, waits and yearns. We feel discontented, and perhaps even lost.
Many times, I’ve created a special space in which to belong. As a child, it was a doll’s house made out of a box and furnished with lids and match boxes and scraps of fabric stitched into cushions and tiny bedding.
When ill, Clarissa Pinkola Estes confides, the soul is very near. Striving is not possible. Once the pain has settled, we can experience the ease and grace of being that’s always there. The way some of us avoid rest, you’d think an abyss was about to swallow us up if we stop!
When stopping happens, there’s space for flow, synchronicities and wonders.
At one such time, sick and deeply tired, I silently asked for help because there seemed to be no other options. Help arrived and I didn’t recognise it.
Leaving the hospital on a typically grey Melbourne day, I saw a bunch of pale lilac Chrysanthemums at a shop-front. Luminous, bursting with life, I took them home, dropped my bag and put them in the nearest jug. A green ceramic hand-thrown jug.
I couldn’t hang pictures on the rented walls. All available surfaces had paintings resting on them, so I placed the vase of flowers in front of a painting – there was space for flowers.
Space for flowers… rippled through my mind and made more space.
Together, the painting and vase of flowers made a space in which I could breathe out.
The space included me.
Composition, when it feels right will do that.
The fog cleared in those moments, and for hours afterwards. I knew what must be done.
Space for Flowers.
And space for you. The upside of not fitting in is you’re on your one-of-a-kind way already. There’s a reframe!
If you’d like to find out about other ways of thinking that support your being an artist-creator of your unique and purposeful work…
Register here for my free webinar coming soon
Hope to see you there!
Suzanne
Recent Comments