Wedding Season: B-sides

Transition

My body’s frame, ripe with jostling bone and liquid along the

Path next to the river.  Heartbeats lace my breath.  The ground

Feels hard.  

I see a family of ducks mildly drifting, nestled firmly into the water’s

Orange, chamomile surface.

It is sunrise.  

I too, feel magnetic pulls, urges to migrate, and

Bump constantly against the rib cage

Of my flock.  Duly, my insides smart

Like a finger, licked and raised to the crisp wind.  

A few brown paper leaves are falling.  When I watch them fall

It’s as if the doors in my eyes

Shed their handles as well.  

I wonder now--what you will grasp onto when you

Want to come in?

And I wonder how south has become

Less a direction where migrant feelings flee to

Than an artery,

An uncontrollable pouring of what I thought myself to be

Toward an ocean of loneliness

Just outside of focus.  

A loneliness that means a few things:

The silk boniness of cars passing in the street,

The swollen machinery of the way we are

Grandfathered into this world,

And the memory that friends walk together in the rain not because

They enjoy getting wet but because

They don’t really notice it’s raining.  

Farther down the path, the image of the ducks still strokes

At my salt block heart, coarse and caring,

A mother cow's tongue against my most fragile self.   

Naming this season once felt so simple.  

Now, I speak only in flakes of

Paint, chipping from the words

In the sold-out church of my mind.

The Cowboys of Bio-dynamic Gardening

The sun is just cresting above the row of trees on the upper meadow, swelling the ribs of the greenhouse with golden light. Small veins of condensation streak the taut, plastic hides as I walk slowly past on my way to greet Fabian, who has no doubt been in the radish and salad beds since dawn. The cold earth bites my wet, bare feet. He simply nods to me in greeting, handing me a green plastic crate as we silently kneel on either side of glistening, sagging sugar-snap peas. His seasoned fingers flit in and out of the plants as if it were second nature; I’m pushing myself to keep up, eyes straining for ripe pods yet eager at the challenge. Although we don’t talk much, it’s okay, as the popping sound of peas pulled from their stems consecrates the ritual—it is mornings we harvest.

***

After graduating from college, I had the romantic vision of working on a farm for a summer. I was born on a farm, so daydreams of idling about a garden in golden afternoon light, or bumbling along on a tractor have become a nostalgic form of homeward bound for me. After a period of travel, I found a small “Demeter” farm in northern Germany where I could work in the Gärtnerei (garden). I was excited by the notion of getting onto my hands and knees and getting dirty, and, as my father is German, of a return to the roots in more ways than one.  

Established in 1924, and named after the Greek goddess of the harvest, Demeter is an officially recognized brand of bio-dynamic farming based upon the Anthroposophical philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (of “Waldorf” fame). It is organic farming rooted in holistic and mystical practices—filling a cow horn with manure then burying it, and sowing according to the phases of the moon included.

Given the rigid stereotypes generally applied to Germans—rational, efficient, and, well, rigid—the acceptance and support of these practices might seem contradictory. Yet Steiner, who arguably fathered modern organic farming, rigorously attempted to apply a clear, western-based thought process to spiritual questions. While no mystic himself, he forged a path of “spiritual science,” a systematic approach that allowed him to apply his philosophy across almost all aspects of human life, ranging from child development to medicine to architecture.

In regards to farming, his doctrine treats the myriad ecosystems found on a farm—soil, plants, animals, humans—as a harmonic whole, a self-sustaining organism. While Demeter regulations are stricter than those of standard organic farming, Fabian, the head gardener, explained that what essentially separates the two is Demeter’s required misting of a fertilizer concocted from one's own cow manure over the fields. On this farm, the mystical practices were obsolete while the brand remained. There simply wasn’t enough time to work in accordance with natural cycles, and still succeed economically in the shadow of big farming’s deflated prices.   

During my first week on the fields, I felt a strong sense of purpose—that I was doing something important, albeit slightly beyond my comprehension. I took to the work earnestly, and there was plenty to do—the 22-acre plot required the four of us (Fabian, two apprentices, and me) to pull at least ten-hour days. And even then, there was the lame tractor gathering rust in need of repair, stretches of fence sagging and porous, and weeds swallowing up the pumpkins, all of which we simply couldn't attend to. This was no patch of grass in the backyard between the sandbox and tree house where you might attempt to hoist a few rods for tomatoes to climb; no place to whisper to your favorite green pepper on weekends. No—this was beds upon beds, three rows per, of neatly sown vegetables and wild flowers (the seeds of which would eventually be sold to construction companies for roadside re-beautification), distinguishable only en masse by color, their ranks wavering sprightily in the omnipresent wind and tapering off into the distance.

While the weeds between rows could be plowed with a tractor, the crops still called for some pretty arduous weeding. I ultimately came to enjoy spending afternoons alone on the upper field crawling my way back and forth along the carrot beds. But the carrot beds, all 12 of them, were accompanied by the peas, red beets, shallots, onions, pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers, green and red cabbages, leeks, green beans, salad, radishes, zucchinis—the list goes on. Fabian had bitten off more than we could chew. But when Manuel, one of the apprentices, told me that he ran the entire operation alone one year, I began to realize what type of company I found myself in. Instead of the often entertained vision of tranquilly dawdling about in a small garden, I had just stepped into a wholly other world—this was the “cowboy” side of gardening.

Fabian was rough. In observing him, my first impression of gardeners was that they were burnt and curt and played all hard on the outside—no filters on their cigarettes, no time to talk about anything other than what the fields demanded that day, nothing but dodgy eye contact and busted knees and if they were to shake hands you’d get mostly dirt and some root threads. They drank coffee instead of water, ate fast so they could get back to work, and spent more time looking for rain clouds than women.

These cowboy gardeners were the odd recluses that, through the industrialization of food, we’ve figured out how to live without. They were hermits. They trusted the almanac, their experiences, and maybe another gardener. And they were frustrated at the system—customers were too picky, the organic label had sold-out to big industry, and no one understands.

Because they were loners, they lived solely for their work—their “vacations” during the winter consisted of drinking more coffee and drawing plans for the summer twenty times over and waiting; in the summer, they cared more for their fields than their families. And they were definitely a little bit crazy—while driving the tractor, Manuel would scream out lines from Moby Dick and cackle madly in pursuit of a phantom white whale.

I quickly adopted their approach. I began tearing through the day-to-day operations; my hands became accustomed to whirring in front of me like blades freeing the choked cabbage, and I started scoping out the fattest sugar snap peas a plant ahead while stripping the plant at hand. A day was no good if it didn’t end with me being sunburnt and completely exhausted. I wanted to prove myself— wanted to saddle up with the rest of them.

While gardening is generally a forgiving process, a hands-loosely-on-the-wheel-of-the-seasons endeavor, I was new to this world , and sudddenly living solely for it, which resulted in internal unrest. My ideal of a simple, meaningful life, lived solely within the heart of the present moment was being tested by the toilsome nature of the work. Ironically, I couldn’t grasp the cyclical nature of what I was taking part, which actually lends itself perfectly to cultivating ones awareness. Someone to confide in might have helped, but outside of the garden crew (which was more likely to shrug and spit than talk), the rest of the farm was not the “community” that the sign on the front gate proclaimed. Additionally, I was still grasping for a sense of closure which I had become attached to during my studies (whether it be turning in a paper or receiving a grade), one which doesn’t necessarily apply in nature. I would excitedly weed the beans one morning, but find myself frustrated at stooping over the same bed a week later.

For Fabian, this wasn’t as much of a problem. Sure, he often bit off more than he could chew, but that was simply because he couldn’t get enough of it all. He was deeply passionate, and to the point of having a few screws loose—0ne night, he turned the tractor's flood light on and tilled the earth until well past midnight. Yet it wasn’t the pursuit of financial success that drove his ambition for more knowledge and experience—the bottom line generally straddled red and black—but the infinite variations of plant types to experiment with that spurred him onward, the succession of failures and triumphs that thrilled him.

Thus, Fabian took to each endeavor with monkish focus (and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas-like chain-smoking). While the apprentices tended to wear knee pads when weeding, Fabian preferred the old school of bare contact; while there is something vitalizing about getting some bone to bone with mother earth, his practices will surely cut short the lifespan of his gardening, causing me to view his stubbornness with somewhat skeptical admiration and awe.

Over time, I came to see a different side of this wild, warrior-like archetype. In The Education of a Gardener, Russel Page writes that “green fingers are the extension of a verdant heart.” While that might seem sentimental, it also corresponds to a certain type of empathy that I witnessed in Fabian—he was very good at recognizing what a plant needed. For adept gardeners, I presume this is intuitive, and based upon experience. For me, well, it wasn’t—propping a newly planted and depressingly listless cabbage in my hands one hot afternoon, I felt as though I was handling a crying newborn without a clue as to what might be aggravating it. Sensing my dismay, Fabian wandered over, and took up the drooping plant next to mine, before smiling and calmly explaining that I shouldn’t worry—“just limp, but they’ll be alright.”

But it’s not all feelings. One day I found him scratching his head, his cigarette hanging limply like a fuming piece of grass between his lips, staring at a field of Indian cress that simply wasn’t coming up. After work, I found him nose deep in one of the thick volumes of gardening kept in the tool shed; I don’t know what he did, but the cress eventually flourished.

Harvesting carrots one morning, I yanked out three all wound around one another, like lovers playing an underground round of twister. I generally find carrots downright hilarious, and laughed aloud, presenting my trophy to the rest, upon which Fabian stormed over, cursing the apprentices who had apparently failed to till the earth deep enough, and who had sown the seeds in too close a proximity, yet again. After calming down, he surveyed the swaying, seemingly grinning green tops like a cook contemplating his next move after tasting a stew—one who knows not only which ingredients compliment one another, but also exactly how they chemically react in order to achieve the envisioned taste. Fabian’s carrots were generally long and straight because he integrated the wisdom of the tomes with his own instinctive touch.

And maybe that’s what makes gardening unique, even beautiful—it demands the simultaneous application of the head, hands, and heart. It is also one of the few human endeavors that calls for one to maintain a balance between the force of nature (“green”) and the power of man (“thumb”). And while our rapid technological domination of the planet might argue otherwise, nature is still a vast mystery to us; gardeners, while never quite satisfied, are more capable at living with such uncertainty than others.

What I initially interpreted as a certain toughness—the cracked hands, rough voice, squint in the eye—only masked Fabian's intrinsic tenderness. I saw it in how he gently scooped up his children when they came to visit him on the field. I saw it when he smiled—that slight curve of the thin lips and crinkling of the skin around his eyes. It was as if he couldn’t help it, but also didn’t quite know how. In such moments, his face revealed his odd mixture of physical vigor, maternity, and boyishness, which coalesced into a character not unlike what Gretel Ehrlich once attributed to the cowboys in her life—“Their strength is a softness, their toughness, a rare delicacy.”

***

In coming to the farm, I was seeking a sense of clarity. After the über-stimulation of university and travel—running from one course to the next, head buzzing with ideas; diving into the chaos of an Asian market to fraternize with the locals and take pictures—I hoped to allow the swirling motes of thought and experience to naturally settle and crystallize into a stillness within me. I wanted to be outside. Go slow. Be in my body. Maybe eat some strawberries.

In retrospect, I realize that I have a budding curiosity for gardening (which I hope remains a part of me for the rest of my life), and that I associate two primary feelings with the Gärtnerei. First is suffering, which I experienced due to a mixture of the “communty’s” unwelcoming social atmosphere, and my inability to calm down and untangle my thoughts before the next round of work. Some mornings it felt as though I was pulling out my conviction along with the weeds. Second is the reverence and wonder that I felt toward the teeming beauty I encountered daily: the autumnal flare of peeling shallots in my hands, how July smiled and the apples blushed, and the way the clouds reared and flexed before rupturing into an afternoon thunderstorm. In moments like these, I felt alive and deeply grateful.

That summer I wasn’t a gardener yet because I couldn’t find the right balance between hands, heart, and mind. I was fulfilling orders rather than acting from my own initiative, and struggled to find a sense of inner peace, thus it was mostly hands, and a fair amount of heart. I’ve learned that I prefer a sense of intimacy with a few plants instead of a greenhouse or football fields’ worth, and thus belong more to the school of thought that Michael Pollan, in his wonderful collection of essays on gardening, Second Nature, espouses—“So simple: grace in the garden but a form of puttering.” I’ve learned that I’m no cowboy. A sheepherder, maybe. But no cowboy.  

During my last week on the farm, I laid beneath an apple tree, coming down from another day’s work. I was sifting through memories, and savoring the final warmth of a fading rose-chamomile light. Reaching into my pocket for my knife, I found a number of seeds that I had absentmindedly scooped up while tidying up the shed. Thumbing them in my palm, I was tempted to plant them in the soil directly at hand. I thought about it for a moment, then had to smile, and returned the seeds to my pocket. No, these—these, I would carry with me, wherever I go.

On Purpose and Process

Platform

During the spring, I decided I wanted to connect with dear ones more frequently, and in a more in depth way.  Given that we're so spread out these days, it's difficult to get the sense of sitting down with someone in a coffee shop to play check-in and learn something from one another's lives.  So, every Saturday, I began setting up phone conversations.  Long ones.  

The connections felt profound--talking for over an hour, the conversations would oftentimes help both parties unpack things that we didn't know where there.  

Saturday Check-Ins seem in demand, given our yearning for authenticity and a deep sense of connection in the increasing pace of modern life.  Something to steady us in, a mirror held up long enough to begin to actually look before oh look! there's a squirrel!  

I've been thinking about this, and wondering if anyone has any ideas of how to turn this concept into a platform.  What about having people set up conversations with questions a la Story Corps, or ping ideas together like one would on Anchor?  What about a way to share what you learned/the highlights with others, either based on topic, or on friend group?  What about creating a larger narrative of conversation by pulling data from the calls and grouping certain words together to see what you value, and what words mean to you?  What about what about what about WHAT ABOUT doing this!?  

Thoughts?  Riffs?  Ways to connect?

As Ever,

K.

Dwell, pt. I

Gareth and I began riffing on what the five most important concepts for humankind in the next century, and we would love to know what you think.  Listen below, and press the red 'reply' button on Anchor to add to the conversation!




You can catch the full initial dialogue below...

The Art of Fear

13 minute read

MICRO-FEAR

After an indoor soccer game, our team decides to go to a new beer hall in town.  Rumor has it that ping-pong tables abound.  Sweet as.

I walk in, survey the scene, and recognize an old colleague.  I clench up.  I have been avoiding all things associated with former work place.  What to say?  I haven’t showed up to pay social dues.  The thoughts go--will they be angry?  Will they actually care?  What do they think of me?

I’m afraid that they won’t like me, that they won’t accept or appreciate me because I haven’t showed face.  In short--I don’t appear to have earned their appreciation and respect, based on my internal calculations (nevermind that all math seems like encrypted gibberish to me).  

It’s a micro fear that possesses me for the rest of the night--when I go to the bathroom, I feel awkward and avoid looking over and making eye contact, assuming that the person is watching me the whole time.  I’m not my normal self--I’m a bit cold and stand-offish.  Thoughts accelerate--“He’s being cold, he doesn’t want to engage with me, he doesn’t like me, they all don’t like me, they probably think I’m selfish for not showing up.”  This goes on.  And on.  

Then, when we’re about to leave, he comes up to me, and banters a bit, being friendly.  

Huh?

So: a micro-fear turned into negative self-talk, developed into a projection onto him (“he doesn’t like me”) which resulted in me being cold based on the assumptions that I was making of him.  

Not.  Reality.  

This all sounds rather dramatic, but this kind of subtle fear happens all the time--micro fears are embodied in anxiety, or small temper tantrums by your internal three year old (or six year old if you’re unreasonably wise).  And they’re oftentimes so ingrained that we don’t know they’re happening, especially during social interactions, where they manifest subtly while our focus points outward, and we’re not so aware of what goes on inside us.  

Some people handle them well, others...not so much--a la yours truly.  

It crops up everywhere--looking into your partner's eyes when breaching a difficult topic for both of you, feeling awkward while checking out because the cashier is attractive and you don’t know how to act, meeting someone new and clenching up inside because you’re terrified they might not accept not just what you’re wearing, but who you are deep down--“oh god, what are they thinking whataretheythinkingwhataretheythinking.”  

Everyday, you’re faced with a series of micro-fears.  

That moment with the colleague stuck with me though.  Because I realized that I don’t want to live like that--I’m tired of living out of fear.  

I’m starting to recognize how much control I’ve allowed micro-fears have over my life.  And how much energy I’ve put into worrying and wondering and assuming, rather than creating and giving and simply being.  When I’m constantly feeding these micro fears with attention, life becomes exhausting.  A drama.  A grasping affair, constantly holding onto expectations and preferences and habits and me.  

MICRO FEARS vs. MICRO DESIRES (dun dun dunnnnnnn)

I was speaking with a new acquaintance the other day, who writes for a living.  Not copywriting, or blogs, or cookbooks.  No--capital N Novels.  Talk about facing daily fear.  If you write Capital N Novels, not only do you have no steady paycheck, but you have no one standing over your shoulder, telling you to write.

He said that every morning, before anything else, he puts on coffee, hunkers down, and hits the keys.  No emails, no diving into an internet rabbit holes, no phone.  Zilch.

No doubt there’s the desire to engage all of those things, and to avoid the work.  

But even that desire is another form of fear--I, for one, indulge most often when I’m trying to evade or escape something.  If you stare at satiation long enough, it melt into fear (and probably macro fear, at that); desire is really just the tip of the iceberg.

LA RÉSISTANCE

What about the “oh, I’ll just do it later today”?  Well, in the insightful words of Author friend, “no, you won’t do it later that day--you won’t, because you suck.”

And we all know this to be true.  Because we all--on some level or another--“suck.”  

Macro fears are obvious.  They jump you, smack you in the face and grab your whole body and shake it like a puppet.  They’re like a big spider that wraps you up and puts you in a stretcher and carries you out into the middle of a desert and leave you there with a bag of a potato chips and a two liter Mountain Dew.  Macro fears are mean.  They’re in ‘control.’

But they’re obvious.  You can see them and they feel all-consuming and wield Old Testament thunder.

For example, when I simply think about having to make a long-term commitment--either to my girlfriend, or to someone that I will be somewhere in six months, or to working a job for the next two years (agh I can’t even type that without getting the jeebies)--I freeze.  Cold turkey.  The world keeps spinning, but I’m dragging my feet, and trying to hold reality back from flowing onward.

Micro-fears take are more subtle--it’s 7:28am, and my list of micro fears is already at 12 (I’m keeping count for now).  And it’s all variations and spin-offs of the fear of being rejected (#3 calling friend to ask him if he wants to join a men’s group that I just joined, #8 admitting to acquaintance that I haven’t found a place to stay for the conference this weekend and facing the shame of asking if I can crash with him, #12 what if people don’t agree with this definition of Art when I post this?).  The meter is running, clearly.  

They take on different voices and are shape-shifting, conniving back-stabbers.  Enter: “Oh, I’ll just do it later today.”  They are the kid of the debate team in high school who could wreck the other side, switch teams halfway through, and then destroy his own original team (Michael Jordan used to do to his teammates during practice; consolation: you’ve got a bunch of little Michael Jordan’s running around inside you! (?!)).  

I suddenly become a top-notch escape artist hollywood stunt-double scheming masterminding child-genius when it comes to making excuses.  My brain starts making quantum leaps and plugging in algorithms and speaking Mandarin fluently and selling the pants off of me.  And I’m buying.  Oh, I am buying.  And the more I buy, the more I “suck.”  The more I give into desires or fears that then control my life (oh, sure, I’ll take another cookie, thank you very much).

If you do break through that initial fear or desire?  “I feel invincible for the rest of the day,” quips Author friend.  Sounds easy enough, nay?  

RESPECT YO’SELF/CHARACTER

We all want to freeze, run, and fight when we are confronted with different things.  Each person has their irrational fears and desires.

If you’re self-confident and are crushing it in your career, maybe you’re terrified of intimacy, and really being vulnerable with another human (I like to hold this over Wall-Street’s head when I’m looking at my balance sheets).  Comparison isn’t the point, but it helps to note that you’re not alone.  Every single one of us, on this planet, faces these little blockages every single day.  We’re limited creatures.  Fact.  I don’t believe you if you say that you had a fear free day.  That doesn’t exist--not if you’re being really honest with yourself.  Maybe you crushed it and overcame your fears and went Superman on everything.  But the fear was still there.  We all have a hindbrain (well, lizardbrain, really, but that’s slightly less appealing to envision).  You’re just… well, Superman.

When that macro fear of commitment rolls around, I experience the overwhelming feeling that reality has just closed in on me, and that I am no longer free.  That I’m completely helpless at the hands of something else.

In reality, that’s simply not the case.  I can always choose to react differently.  But strengthening that volition takes time; that’s a muscle that we’re not taught how to flex so often--it’s a muscle that we’ve allowed consumerism and rampant creature comforts to atrophy to the point where facing discomfort breeds self-pity.  And nothing invokes escapism more than self-pity.  Which is something our grandparents did quite differently, as Joan Didion reminds us-- “They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts.”  

What?!?!  No instant gratification?  I didn’t sign up for this!!

But it gets better, because it hints at a little thing called ‘character,’ that doesn’t tango with the above instant-gratification jones.  Character--it’s a bit different than reading Calvin and Hobbes while growing up, and cackling at what Calvin’s Dad said.  Or, Didion, again-- “In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and with United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for re-election. Nonetheless, character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.”

Boom.

That’s the muscle that we need to use more than ever.  

What I believe Didion is pointing toward when she says “the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life” is that we fully own the consequences and results of our actions--also, then, the consequences of our inactions.  That freezing, and not pushing through fear is a rather serious decision to make.  It might not seem like a decision because of the overwhelming feeling, but if you’ve taken responsibility for your life--truly--then everything is on some level or other, a decision.  (And let’s leave responsibility vs. fate for another sunny day, shall we?)

That’s scary.

There’s also nothing more empowering.  

Suddenly, it’s not the world's fault for putting so many micro (and macro) fears into our lives--it’s our fault for not standing up to them; suddenly, life isn’t happening to you, but you’re happening to life.  

How would the world look if we acted from a place of self-respect?  What if we froze, ran, and fought--internally--less?  

Well, I believe we’d would make more, and better, art.  

MAKING ART

I read Seth Godin’s daily blog posts ritually, and would consider him one of my mentors (he even responded to one of my emails, I swear!).  

I love this quote from Seth--“Art is a human act, a generous contribution, something that might not work, and it is intended to change the recipient for the better, often causing a connection to happen.

Five elements that are difficult to find and worth seeking out. Human, generous, risky, change and connection.

You can be perfect or you can make art.

You can keep track of what you get in return, or you can make art.

You can enjoy the status quo, or you can make art.”

I like this because it frees us from the canvas as credibility model--I don’t need a paintbrush to make art; or--without a paintbrush, I can do work that connects people, is risky, and is human.  

That means that Author friend is no less artist than you are.  That the girl who paints every day is no less artist than you are.

But change works best bottom up.  So before your Art is a company or an organization, it needs to starts in your gut, and in your heart (and aren’t they the same thing in this case?).

So confronting your micro-fears every day, being bold, challenging the norms and rules of your internal status quo, and sharing what’s behind all of the self-defense mechanisms and limiting belief systems--that is Art.

You could be rejected for breaking your internal rules.  

But that could also lead to a deeper connection with others.  And if you don’t hold back and hold yourself down, it will most certainly impact everyone around you (why do you think we’re all obsessed with authenticity these days?).  

If each interaction changes someone around you, it changes the world.  

The world is my Art.  

The world is your Art.  Again--scary, or empowering.  

You have to be brave enough to break your own rules.  To push off despite the weather warnings.  

BEING HUMAN

What I love so much about being a human being (nice phrase to think about) is that we simply haven’t figured out this whole Life thing.  I love that so, so much.  We’re awful at so many things--we’re terrible at dealing with our feelings and communicating, we’re inconsistent and messy, we’re easily overwhelmed, we’re greedy and selfish and defensive and reactive and we’re subjective as all get out.  We complain and want to control everything.  We’re mistake-prone and fallible.  

We err.  It’s innate.

Which is so, so okay.  Because there’s also this beautiful part of us that wants to contribute to life.  That’s concerned with more than just surviving.  That wants to grow and evolve and give to others--that wants to create and share and connect.  That wants to flourish.  That part is innate, too.

It just depends on which one we nurture, and how much we decide to wield our power as human beings.  

Are the compass points for our lives marked with fear?  

What if it fails?  What will people think?  Will they not like me?  What if I do it and it sucks?

You know what sucks?  The part of you and me that’s holding us back.  How we hold ourselves back.  Because that’s what’s keeping the world from being a better place.  

Because it’s the only thing keeping you from making your Art, however you decide to do that.  However you decide to show up.  

It’s on you.  It’s on us.

I heard a beautiful analogy the other day.  A woman who had previously been a pastor was speaking about the leader of her spiritual tradition, a living saint.  She mentioned a theologian who stated that when you see the redwood forests out in California, you think, “wow--now that is a tree.”  In the same sense, the theologian noted that when the disciples saw Jesus, they said, “wow--now that is a human being.”  

We all have an itty bit of that in us.  It all just comes down to whether or not we decide to overcome ourselves to let it out.

We’re never going to be perfect.  The fear will always be there.  

The fear will never change.  

Will you?

---

So how is your art?

What’s one of your internal rules, and how can you break it?  Share in the comments below, and then go do it (!yikes!), and report back for feedback and support.  I’ll go first...