Sunday, August 07, 2011

Day 233

It's Sunday and about time I showed up. I've got nothing to offer but an update. I'm winging it this morning, just talking as I would to any other friend. True enough, it's been a tough week. A friend told me yesterday that I've sounded a lot lately like the wolves were at my door. It does feel that way sometimes when I wake, especially in the middle of the night. But it's more like I've moved to the advance class. Oh yeah, these last three years have been an education. I feel that I've brought my C- up to a solid B, but it takes a toll, this curriculum.


I continue to write things down and to look at things as openly as I'm able, employing the generous grace of Poppet Vision. There's a fair enough chance that my hard schooling will parlay itself into art and writing that will be 'worth the cost.' That's what every artist wants, is it not? Then it may not. In my earlier years, when my older children were tots, I invested a lot into my art career. In my earnest, eager, hollywood-fueled heart I believed that 'in the end' the work would help me create a life for them and they'd see it was all





worth the cost.





Really, there is no end and we must learn to balance what we invest in our futures with what we devote to our presents. It seems the only way to learn this balance is to live until our futures are smaller than our pasts. So I'm going to say to you, dear reader, put effort into your future. Climb a tree and see where you're headed. But keep your heart in the present. It's fleeting, for sure. Here we are. Now. And now that moment is gone. These words I've written are in our pasts. We can never retrieve time we didn't spend well.


Practice living in the now. Love your today. If even one of you benefits from this message I'll feel a bit less of a fool.





Have a good Sunday. I'm off to work today, so that tomorrow I can play with Orion. Fortunate that we humans sleep and can, like Finnigan, begin again.

5 comments:

Melissa P said...

This was the perfect message for me today. Balance requires strength and practice. I often forget to work at it. Instead I expect it to happen on its own like some sort of reward for my toiling.

The follies of humanity provide an inexhaustible supply of material for poppets. Have a great time away from work playing with Orion.

Anonymous said...

I had a very similar conversation with my husband today. We went to look at furniture, which we need (we're in our 40s, enough already with the college-conglomeration of bedroom furniture!). We spent more time looking than we had "budgeted", resulting in him being "late" to the office. He was upset about how far "behind" that would put him.

Supposedly he works 8-5 Monday through Friday, but I can't remember the last time he didn't go in on a weekend.

I told him that I thought that our lives were out of balance if he felt that spending time with his family on a weekend was stealing time from his job. He thought a few minutes and agreed...but neither of us know exactly how to fix it.

The idea of living in the now is one that I've struggled with for a long time. It's a hard lesson to teach myself, let alone someone else.

But I hope he can learn. I hope with both can.

Thank you for this timely entry.

lisa said...

MelissaP: I think you're right about balance, strength and practice. It's one thing to understand what it is (an accomplishment in its own right) but quite another to put it into practice. I work hard at it too. Thank you.

ulffriend: When I work too much it's often because I'm anxious about the economy or I have some immediate need to raise money. Those bills never stop and I'm responsible. I've also worked too much because I believed the next plateau was right around the corner and if I could just climb to 'there' I could relax and play. Mostly over the years, it didn't work that way. There's always an unexpected bump.
It's good that you're looking for a solution together. Wishing you both good luck with this.

Shonna said...

It is all about the journey isn't it. And achieving balance is hard, we are fleeting frail beings, who sometime ask too much of ourselves or lose our way as we get distracted or overwhelmed by the enormity of the expectation and memory. Your post today is timely -life is for living, and being present in the moment. The wolves are scared of that... love and hugs shonna.

lisa said...

Shonna: love and hugs right back to you, always.