Tag: Thoughts

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.

The universe got it right by giving us the seasons

homeThe wind has started blowing a bit harder and the sun escapes from view much earlier these days. But home feels so cosy and just right for staying in. I like our home. I love the books scattered around the house, the remains of our toddlers’ adventures that need scooping up towards the end of each day, the fruit and vegetables in the baskets in our kitchen, even the sink still filled with pots from today’s cooking episodes. I think the universe got it right by giving us the seasons. The late autumn and winter and the cosiness that we experience of our own homes – doesn’t it support one view? That where we are is home. That where we are now we should be now, at this given moment in time. That everything is as it should be.

I will be using this winter to grow the same level of cosiness in my heart and look for every feeling in me that sends this warmth to the world and back to myself and my family.

What do you do to cultivate warm feelings?

Be gentle with your thoughts

gentle thoughtsImagine how differently our life would feel if we accepted that the destiny of our evening thoughts is to give us the necessary ointment for our minds. That our evening thoughts are there to give a massage to our troubled and over-exerted neurons. That their evening flow is supposed to clear our tensions, dissolve our doubts and heal what’s limping or fatigued. That rest starts even before we go to sleep. How contented would we be falling asleep?

What do you do to make sure that your thoughts are gentle to your mind?

Follow your child’s gaze

birds

Just before the night sets in I sit down on a bed with my little boy, we surround ourselves with a number of picture books and we look through the images and I read to him. Depending on how busy our day was and how alert we both are this little ritual of ours lasts from 15 minutes up to an hour. I love this daily encounter with different adventures, poems and stories but most of all I love this very peaceful time with my child and the feeling of unity that it creates.

Years ago I was wondering what it is about reading or rather following a particular story which creates this feeling of togetherness. I decided that the answer partially is held in our gaze. We look in the same direction. We see things together.

When we go about our days with my son I try to follow his gaze. I try to look where he looks so that I get to know him better, so that I learn what his interests are. I hope that through this he will find courage to stay true to his interests later on in life and to be sure that whichever direction he will turn to, I will be watching this with interest too.

As part of my own development I often listen to podcasts and interviews on creativity, curiosity and calling in adult life and I like to link them to how I see childhood. Over these very first years of my son’s life I have formulated a very firm conviction that at the moment, at the very moment of being and becoming, curiosity is his only calling.

I owe it to his future to respect this.

Check the podcasts that inspired me to write the post above: http://robbell.com/portfolio/robcast/