Tag: Life

A December Soundscape

We’ve made an early start in our preparation towards Christmas. My little elf and I decorated our living Christmas tree last Sunday and we made the house smell of oranges, cinnamon and cloves with our very simple house ornaments. I’ve been having a very strong need of embracing peace in this very last month of the year – to counterbalance the madness that’s reported daily in the news but also to create a distance towards all the imposed deadlines and obligations that we have towards the end of year.

There is nothing worse than getting ourselves wound-up and exhausted during the time when our hearts are supposed to be expanding with peace, love and kindness, during the time when we should be filling ourselves up with all the goodness of the world that allows us to give and love fully in the year to come.

A while ago my husband and I promised to each other that we will live with the seasons, that we will allow ourselves to experience every month as nature wants us, with the goodness that each month brings. December with its candle-lit evenings, warm blankets and the purity of snow, invites peace. Early darkness frees us from disturbances – it is almost as if we’ve been encouraged to go a little deeper into ourselves to look for peace and remove the noise from our heads and hearts.

What I found, however, is that recently I have been coming home with some odd Christmas jingels in my head or snippets of disturbing news and conversations and I’ve been struggling to quieten these earworms in my head, but Thank God for good music. Music brings me to life and balance. The magical music that sends me where I want to be… into the cosy arms of the magical peaceful world of love and hope (and a little bit of nostalgia to complete it all).

If, just as me, you are a seeker of mellow contentedness and you love soulful, heart-opening (sometimes acoustic and instrumental but often also lyrical) music, here are my recommendations for you (click to open them in You Tube). I cannot have enough of these albums – my life would be emptier without them. Who knows… it might be the same for you.

  1. Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny – beyond the Missouri Sky
  2. Josh Groban – Closer
  3. Sara Tavares – Balance
  4. Chris Botti – Impressions
  5. Leonard Cohen – Greatest Hits

Peace.

Why do we do what we do?

why do what we do what we do

I’ve been thinking many times this year about quitting blogging or quitting photography or quitting my research or one of the three languages that we speak at home – this one was initiated by someone’s suggestion rather than personal doubt – but anyhow…

This year has been a struggle – a continuous ping-pong of rejecting and accepting of who I am and what I do. When I tried to quit any of the things above, I felt terribly unsettled, I felt that I was betraying someone and this someone was me. Fortunately, what I was rejecting was coming back – so now I am wiser and I’ve accepted that if what we reject somehow comes back and it brings joy, it’s a signal that this is who we are and that perhaps – Could this be true? – that we have found ourselves. So this is who I am and this is what I do and there is no further story to it. Just acceptance of it all.

I think it’s the joy that makes it ours – it’s this quiet emotion that puts a spring in our steps, the emotion that should not go unnoticed.

If you feel joyful about something, it’s yours. If you feel joyful about returning to something, it’s yours. If you feel joyful about commencing something, it’s yours.

Never underestimate the power of joy for joy is what you are meant to be.

Beauty equals…

lily

“The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one’s own – even more one’s own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.” Katherine Anne Porter, journalist and author

I’ve been trying to position myself towards the topic of beauty for a long time now. I have been brought up in a home that did not celebrate beauty. “Beauty is only skin-deep” was probably the most often used statement about beauty that I heard as a child. It was of course used in order to show that assigning importance to looks is superficial but I think that more often than not we were quite confused about the statement. Because if it was superficial and we generally should not care about it, why did we have to look good when we were visiting relatives?

Anyhow, ‘Beauty is only skin-deep’ was a saying that many liked to sing when we were growing up and, to be honest, I see it now as more damaging to children’s understanding and appreciation of beauty than helpful in building their characters. What I do not like about this saying is that it discredits beauty per se, it discredits the need for looking after it, it discredits the need for creating it and if said too often, it basically stops us from looking after the beauty that we are surrounded with and the beautiful people that we are.

Beauty requires effort. It takes work and purposeful, regular practice to create it. It also takes knowledge and dedication. I only truly understood this through my life experiences over the last few years: growing a child, making things for our house and garden, writing and photographing. What I have learnt is that beauty thrives with care and creativity and care and creativity entail effort. Creativity is effort, it’s seeing details, it’s being able to mould materials until they take the shape that we want them to take, it’s also about learning how beauty is made and about practice. It’s about spending time and often exerting ourselves to reach the outcome that we want to have, and finally it’s about tending to it regularly, taming it’s wildness. Beauty can be shallow but usually it is not. Usually beauty is work. It’s a lot of work nurtured with love and affection.

Shouldn’t we therefore teach our children that beauty should be respected rather than disparaged?

The more affection we have towards who we are, what is within us and what is around us, the more beautiful…

everything becomes.

The hardest type of guidance

leading oneself

This PhD that I am doing right now is one of the most difficult things I’ve selected to do in my life. I keep on questioning myself over it all the time. I’ve never done work as big as this and have never had to manage as much on my own in my entire life. Being totally responsible for your own creativity and thinking and your subsequent steps can be quite scary. I have always had very strong teachers in my life – now I am the teacher and the leader and often I feel quite overwhelmed by this responsibility… just for myself and for the outcome of my work. Although the freedom to do what I love doing is wonderful, is tasty, delicious even, I think that self-guidance is the hardest type of guidance out there.

I am learning to trust myself. To trust my own judgment and my own ideas, but often I shake with self-doubt.

I know that when we do not have enough strength in our muscles, we tremble. I know that it is only with practice and regular exercise that the tremble subsides to the point that we even forget later that we had that shaky muscle. The longer I work on this muscle, the more I am convinced that tasks such as the one that I am facing are mainly about conquering myself. No one else. Nothing else. Just myself.

Giving yourself permission to create

pomidorki2

It was mid-October and my tomato vine was still producing its pearls. My toddler loved to grab this little coconut shell and move from one tomato pot to another to see if something was still lurking on the slowly drying vines. He was usually lucky.

I’ve been thinking a lot about talents and creativity lately. About how little I understand how creativity works but equally about how limited our lives are when we do not find time and courage to answer inspiration and to hear our enthusiasm speaking to us.

I once read an interview with a famous Polish singer in which she admitted that she relies on her audience to cheer her before she appears on the stage, that she almost needs their permission to sing although she’s been singing for over thirty years and has been having a very successful and fulfilling career. I think this feeling is quite a common one – we all need a cheer every so often, but the ironic thing is that until we don’t show what we can and want to do, those around us would not know what to cheer for. That is why having a go (or multiple goes) at doing something and then sharing it with others is important. Trepidation never disappears but it subsides and turns into a strong feeling of joy related to having something completed.

Maybe ideas are a bit like children, we need to help them grow, help them mature but then we need to let them go so that they meet suitable partners for themselves.

I am happy that I did not need a cheer to plant the cherry tomatoes.