We are enough, exactly as we are.
It is very easy to forget our divine origins. It is very easy to see ourselves as the products of our birth families, shaped and colored only by those transactions. We are much larger than that. We are each a soul, unique and distinctive, bringing to bear on life a rich legacy of spiritual gifts if we but open ourselves to the possibility that we are not merely the products of our conditioning. We are spiritual beings with spiritual business to transact here on this earth. We have a destiny to fulfill.
When we chronically criticize ourselves, it makes it difficult for us to take action. We freeze, afraid that we are liable to do something badly. We do not risk that in fact we may do it well and that we may be the one person intended to do the good deed we are avoiding. Take, for example, the conversation you might have urging a gifted student to have the self-worth to go on to college. Perhaps you alone can reach this young person's heart. I am thinking now of a talented actor who met retired film director John Newland in the unlikely backwater of Taos. Assessing the youngster's talent, New-land immediately steered him toward an acting conservatory on the coast. "You don't want to be stuck here as a big fish in a small pond. You can be a big fish in a big pond," Newland told him.
We intersect one another's lives for a purpose, and we bear gifts for one another. When we are hypercritical of ourselves, we are afraid to offer the gifts that we bear, gifts of acknowledgment and appreciation, gifts of acceptance and respect. Focused on criticizing the self, it is hard to offer help or guidance to others. It creates a vicious cycle. We feel small, we act small, and then we conclude that we are small because we have shirked the largeness required of us.
Self-acceptance makes it easier for us to be large.
How do we work, then, to accept ourselves? It begins with a
determination to remember the beauty of our own personality. There are many days when our mountains are erased by the haze of low self-worth. Reminding ourselves that our glorious mountains are real, that we have acted well and will act well again, is a step in the right direction. It also helps to sneak up on self-worth. Begin with comments to the self that are less threatening. Perhaps you can edge from "I am kind" to "I am generous." Admitting that we are kind and generous, we can, perhaps, then take a kind and generous action that reinforces the notion that we are kind and generous. We can return the phone call we have been dodging out of low self-worth. We can be the one who calls another and says, "I have been thinking about you. How are you?"
Sometimes we need to act "as if." We need to say to ourselves,
"How would a person with self-worth act? Act that way." Then,
rather than hang back from interaction, afraid of intruding, we call
the recent widow and offer our condolences, we call the flighty
student and offer to meet for a cup of coffee. We act out of a sense
of our own worthiness, and in doing so we reinforce the worthi
ness of others.
All creative acts require daring, and daring is something that can be learned. We dare, first of all, to accept ourselves as we are in the moment. We dare, next, to accept that that may be enough. Writing from where we are, painting from where we are, acting from where we are, we make beauty of the places we have been. By insisting to ourselves that beauty is present even on those days when we cannot see it, we make the beauty in the world more real. The fact that today I cannot see the mountains in my valley does not mean that they are gone. In the same way, the fact that
some days we cannot see our own beauties does not mean that they are gone. It is worth instigating a line of gentle questioning.
If I felt I were beautiful enough, good enough, and worthy enough, how would I act?
Act that way.
REMEMBERING. WHO WE ARE
Try this: When we seek to have greater self-worth, we often ignore the word "self" in that equation. In order to have self-worth, we must ask ourselves what our true self appreciates. Acting in alignment with our true values is what brings us self-worth. Take pen in hand. Number from 1 to 10. List ten qualities or accomplishments that you appreciate about yourself. Complete the following phrases as rapidly as possible:
Something I really appreciate about myself is
Something I really appreciate about myself is
Something I really appreciate about myself is
Something I really appreciate about myself is
Something I really appreciate about myself is
6. Something I really appreciate about myself is
7. Something I really appreciate about myself is
8. Something I really appreciate about myself is
9. Something I really appreciate about myself is
10. Something I really appreciate about myself is
Taking Heart
Today I read a book that a friend of mine wrote. It took her two years to write it and it took me a day to read it. It was so good that I gulped it down. What I remember about the writing of the book was my friend's agony over whether the work was any good, the long silences she suffered through from her editor, and the long seasons of self-doubt that the silences triggered.
"Maybe I should just give up writing," I remember her thinking at one point. "Maybe after thirty years I have done enough of it and I am just too thin-skinned to keep it up. What's the point anyway? It's just a book."
It is ironic to me that the book my friend so despaired of may be one of the best she has ever written. It tells me how far off-kilter we can go that she didn't sense that, that she didn't somehow stubbornly stay her book's champion even in the endless months when it garnered no reception. Why couldn't she hold on to "It's good" or "I'm good"? But she could not—and furthermore, I understand why she could not, and I see this creative suffering all the time.
When we make something, we may love the process of making it, but we are also making it to serve a purpose, to connect to an audience and complete its life cycle. A silversmith makes a spoon to sip soup or to spoon trifle. When the soup is spooned, the trifle tasted, the silversmith can sigh, "Ah, that's good." A cycle
stands completed. The artful article has found its appreciative audience. When we make a piece of art and no one samples it— or when they sample it without a little "mmrn" of contentment, we suffer. We tell ourselves we should be more mature, that we should love our work just for our work's sake, but that sainthood eludes most of us. A piece of art needs a recipient. Otherwise we are pitching pennies down a well with no bottom. There is no tiny splash or "plunk" of connection, and so we feel lost, crazy, shallow, immature. But are we?
In our culture, the act of making art is removed from the daili-ness of lives. Most writers are not like Dickens, writing his serialized page-turners to fill a Sunday supplement fueled by the appetite of his readers. Our art is marginalized. With the advent of television and the Internet, video games and computer games, most art is now relegated to a sidebar, an also-ran entry in the sweepstakes of life. A playwright is no longer writing to an audience that turns out to see plays as a way of life, a Way to process national consciousness. Where once art was dead-center and art-making a calling that was embedded in the cultural life of a city, art-making now smacks of esoterica. Rather than being a primary way to process life, a summing up, art now is more diversionary. "He writes novels. . . ." (And who needs them anymore?)
When artists were simultaneously more revered and more ordinary, art was something that was rallied to and supported. Art preceded the entertainment industry. Books were exciting and central to our lives. The novelist was a sort of marathon hero. Ditto the painter, the sculptor, the dancer. They brought a beauty and spe-cialness to life's experience. They created art as a distillate of the collective consciousness for which they were the uniquely qualified
spokesmen. Ezra Pound called artists "the antennae of the race," and the race was tuned in to those antennae, eager to know what was being picked up, "where we are heading." Now t
he news at ten purports to tell us the same thing. The endless talk shows feature top-of-the-head opinions rather than the shaped pieces of consciousness that are created art. We have instant responses now to world events. Art takes time, and it is in this very taking of time that the artist is often worn down.
The book I read today—devoured today, it was that savory— was two years in the writing. Those were two years without feedback, lonely years of self-discipline, long hours at the keys, longer hours carrying the burden of the book's invisible weight. My friend is a successful writer, therefore a writer presumed to be beyond the humble need for encouragement. But none of us, really, is ever beyond that need. Like any other worker, we need the occasional pat, "Job well done." In art, such pats are few and far between. (When work becomes public, critics may wield brickbats, not pats on the back.) This is hard to deal with, and just how we do deal with it is something each of us works out for ourselves. Many of us, conscious of our neediness, try to build a life with ego structures in it other than work, so that if work is wobbly, we can still relate in terms of our other roles—wife, mother, lover, friend. Yet work is central, and most artists, ashamed of their need for encouragement, try to carry their work to term like a secret pregnancy.
"What are you up to these days?"
"Yes, well, I'm working on a book. . . ." The voice trails off. The tone says, "Let's drop it."
We artists have heard too many stories about the artist as spoiled brat, the artist as greedy egotist, for most of us to want to impose even a soupcon of this on our friends and colleagues. And so we bunker in with our projects, beleaguered by our loneliness and by the terrible secret that we carry: We need friends to our art. We need them as desperately as friends to our hearts. Our projects, after all, are our brainchildren, and what they crave is a loving extended family, a place where "How'd it go today?" can refer to a turn at the keys or the easel as easily as a turn in the teller's cage.
Survival
TAKING HEART
Try this: Art is an act of connection. We make art in order to communicate. This means that our eventual audience is important to us, and is part of the life cycle of our work. Take pen in hand and number from 1 to 5. Select five people from your friends and acquaintances who are good catcher s mitts for your creative projects. Next to each name, describe the particular qualities that make that person a desirable audience member.
Now number from 1 to 5 again. This time write the names of five people who should not be allowed as early viewers of your work. Next to each name, write why, and which qualities lead you to exclude them. This is an exercise in discernment.
It has been raining lightly in late afternoon, but the rains have been so slight that they have neither quenched the thirsty earth nor washed clear the atmosphere. A normal summer's night in New Mexico is spangled by stars. Constellations are flung, glittering, horizon to horizon. But now the smoky nights blot out the stars. Sleepers toss restlessly, breathing air still tinged by cinders. The hiking trails are closed due to fire hazard. Die-hard hikers complain, but they comply. The forests are empty of humankind. The glorious landscape is cloaked by a shroud—visitors can only be told about the azure bowls of sky that they are missing. One day at a time, the tainted skies can be tolerated, but only a day at a time.
Just as people can live and work under the smoke-choked sky, so, too, in a creative career we often pass through times of difficulty. There are periods when the time and solitude to work are in short supply. Other times, we have the time but lack the inspiration. It is in the patient moving-through of all forms of creative weather that we learn that we can move through them, and that we should. It is a question of perspective. "Just for today, I can handle this circumstance," we say as we drive uptown to run an errand and steal an hour alone in a cafe to do our writing. Art is like lovemaking; where the genuine ardor is there, the will will find a way. It is a piece of hard-won advice that if a man is too
busy to call you, he is not in love. If we are too busy to make art, we are not artists. Artists, like all true lovers, steal moments from the crowded day. A half hour in the quiet house before the children wake, that stolen hour at the cafe, forty-five minutes before bedtime—these small increments of scrounged time add up to our commitment. Just as life goes on despite the smoke, art goes on despite the life.
We use the phrase "practicing artist," but we seldom allow ourselves to enjoy the nuance of meaning it conveys. We do not need to be perfect as artists. We do not need to create every day. But we do need to create most days. We do need to practice our creativity, wedging it in, however imperfectly, amid our busy activities. Because the part of us that creates is youthful and vulnerable, the making of art cannot be deferred too often or too long. Like a small child, our artist simply does not understand delays and denials. Like a small child, our artist is easily hurt, easily scarred by indifference and inconsideration.
Conversely, like a small child, our artist is easily bribed and encouraged. We can coax our artist into cooperation. We can cajole our artist into creation. Bribes work, and so does trickery. We can take our artist on "writing or sketching dates, hoodwinking it through a little cheerful company into doing our will. The point, always, is to keep working, and to keep that work as close to play as possible. We can woo our artist like a lover, enticing it out to play with the small, festive expeditions I call Artist Dates. A movie may be good for our novelist. A bookstore may serve our painter. The highly colored bolts of silk in a fabric shop may lead us to more colorful art. Small steps, very small steps, lead to large
changes. A novel is written a page at a time. In a year, we can accumulate 365 pages at the modest rate of a page a day. A needlepoint project undertaken in snatched moments can come to fruition within a month. Adversity may steal our hours and our attention, but adversity, like smoke, can be survived.
Catalysts
SURVIVAL
Try this: As artists, we are hardy creatures. We survive adverse circumstances and prevail despite them. We seldom give ourselves credit for our own hardihood. Take pen in hand. Number from 1 to 5. List five difficult periods in which you managed to both survive and make art. For example:
The year I had a crazy adviser for my thesis
The year my job demanded overtime
During my pregnancy
During my husband's illness
When I had young children underfoot
Most of us lead lives embedded in busyness, and yet we manage to make the business of art-making a priority. We owe ourselves a vote of gratitude for our own survival.
Those who provoke us into art do so by their interest and enthusiasm. They are curious about life. Curious about what we have to say about life. They themselves have not given up on life. They are interested in mysteries—interested in the mystery of what we will have to say. In a word, muses find us amusing. They smile at our jokes. They frown at the questions we raise. They are lively in response to our living art. When we drop a penny down the well of their consciousness, it makes a "splash" when it hits bottom.
People who catalyze us are not chilly and withholding. They tell us what they think—which may not be quite what we wish to hear. They say, "What do you mean by that? I am not quite clear." They say, "Do you mean this to apply in all cases?" People who catalyze us are responsive. They have nervous systems that react. They have minds that range with curiosity over the questions that we raise. They remember the questions we have raised before and they remind us when we have shifted our ground and our perspective. They act like we are interesting. They themselves are interested in life. They are not blase. They do not feign boredom. They are not "too sophisticated" or "too intellectual" to get emotionally involved with the grit of living.
A muse has enthusiasm. During the season that I wrote my crime novel The Dark Room, I met my muse, Ellen Longo, for lunch every day at Doris Cafe. Over a burrito or a bowl of red
beans and rice, I would read Ellen the day's c
hapter, and she would "oooh" and "ahhh" at my hero Elliot's adventures. An accountant and an astrologer—not an unlikely combination in Taos—Ellen took an interest both in the details and the story lines of my characters' lives. She had a particular fondness for Dr. Violet Winters, Elliot's "love interest." Muses take interest in our creative process, recognizing the fact that making art is a risky and enlivening venture, and one that they feel privileged to get to share. A muse may be enigmatic but probably not—certainly not all the time. It is more than likely that Mona Lisa had a few opinions and shared them with da Vinci when he put down his brush.
A muse is a reflecting mirror that shows us "This is worth it." A muse acts as if life is adventurous, as though our grappling with the page or the canvas or the clay matters and has significance. Muses tell us we are not alone, that the bone we drag back to lay at their feet may be delicious and well worth the struggle. Think of Mona Lisa again, that sly, delighted, secretive smile. That is certainly worth provoking in someone. Our muses may grace us with smiles or with hoots of delight. They may scrawl on the edge of our manuscript, "Now, this is interesting!"
A muse has an appetite, and that appetite makes us hungry to express ourselves. A muse is never glutted on life, on too much thinking and too much input. The muse cocks an ear, cranes forward slightly, and lets us know that what we have yet to say and yet to think may be the most interesting of all the tidbits yet.
Those who dampen us act above it all. No matter how interesting our thoughts or conjectures, they seem to be barely stifling a yawn. Boredom is the pose they take most often. Cynicism is another favored guise. Cynics are monsters to the creative process.
They are poison and anathema to the impulse to make something. They act as if whatever we have in mind is somehow beneath them and that they are really slumming spending time with us and our interests.
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