“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.” Robert Frost.
Maybe Lost is exactly the right place to be, Mairead.
awareness
Fly birdie, fly!
(What you looking at?)
“The shell must break before the bird can fly.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson
Is there something you need to break? Mairead.
Good Morning!
(We went to Dublin on Saturday and saw some socks)
Good morning (no it’s not Sunday afternoon…) I’m sitting looking out the window as the sun is breaking through from behind a cloud – lots of bright rays, like the way my seven-year old self used to draw the sun (well I still doodle it that way…)
(We nearly hired Dublin Bikes)
I probably should run out and get a picture for you but it’s quite nice just sitting here looking t it and dropping my head occasionally to write a line. Our cat Fred is sitting on the desk beside me looking at the sun too or maybe he’s looking at the birds.
(We walked on the cobblestones)
A plane went by, very high up above the sun’s cloud and I am wondering about the people in it. It’s very hard from down here beside the cat in front of the cloud to imagine more than one hundred people sitting up there in the sky….. possibly having their breakfast. Then it’s very difficult to imagine the life of anyone else as I sit here in my life with the cat and the cloud. Even when I do imagine that life I know it’s only from my point of view. And the details are made up of my experience of a slightly similar situation.
Now Fred is looking at me and I’m wondering about his life…. probably time to get up, Mairead.
Turn off your DLPFC!
(Mixed media in progress…)
I’ve been reading and listening to Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine How Creativity Works. I listened to it last summer with the hens in the forest. They weren’t hugely impressed with Jonah but I really like him so I bought his book too. Anyway, the bit I was re-listening to this weekend was about the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Rather than try, I’ll let Jonah explain it….
“While the DLPFC has many talents, it’s most closely associated with impulse control. This is the bit of neural matter that keeps each of us from making embarrassing confessions, or grabbing food, or stealing from a store.”
(after I heard him say this I highlighted it)
Sounds good, right? Well yes and no…. Most of the time it’s a good idea not to be too impulsive. But what if you’re learning to draw or paint or what if you just want to create a beautiful get well card? What if you want to write something interesting or design something that pleases you? Well, at times like that impulse control is your biggest critic and your biggest enemy. In all fairness it’s trying to protect you from something embarrassing – a silly drawing, an aspiration to write a book, a childish necklace – very scary possibilities.
(….playing with disposable….)
Turns out the DLPFC is the last brain area to fully develop, that explains why small children have no problem throwing a tantrum in a crowded shop. It also explains why they love their art! No impulse control… no critic. The good news is Jonah tells us about a study where just asking the adult subjects to think of themselves as seven-year olds (and spend a little time writing as their seven-year old self) caused them then to score higher on creativity tasks.
I’m off to play…. Mairead.
P.S. it’s Sunday afternoon as I write ✓
Getting forgetful?
(Morning! Or afternoon?)
As I sit here at 8.30am on Monday morning I wonder why I don’t sit here at 3.30pm on a Sunday afternoon. Why wait until the last minute? Why set up a habit that doesn’t support the good and the healthy? Why not set up a habit that makes life and the living of it easier? Why indeed?
(One of my buttons on my art project)
It’s something I’ve considered previously, with some success too. There was the walking for twenty minutes a day habit, the drinking three pints of water a day habit, the blogging at 3pm every day habit, the photography every day habit, even the drawing every day habit. But for some reason it’s much easier to let those kinds of habits go and forget that they were even a consideration.
(Focus on the important things….)
Now I’m considering…. and it seems like this might be the perfect time to reinstate some useful habits. I’ll have to be ruthless when I’m deciding which ones to reinstate. Probably best if I ask myself what I want to be doing in six months time (when my habits have taken hold.)
This could take a little time, Mairead.
My dark January.
(From winter in Cashel 2010)
It’s January. For me that’s the time of year when my energy is at its lowest. When the winter has been long enough and I want some spring….. now! I want it now like my two-year old self wanted chocolate…. but Spring’s not ready yet. So I have to practice patience.
(Spider art)
I thought this year it would be different. I am occupied and preoccupied by my course and I thought that would help me forget it was still winter. It hasn’t. Instead it’s shown up further “issues”. When I’m lacking patience with winter I also lack patience with everything else I meet. I am lacking patience with the accounts (my old foe), with my latest assignments, with housework, with bills, with Denis, with myself.
(The lovely side of winter)
I had forgotten it all started with January and I was thinking, “these blasted accounts again”, “how can I ever get this history of art done?”, “when does housework finish?”….. but these are not the problem. In fact there is no problem, I just miss the light. I miss getting up after sunrise and having dinner before sunset, I want more time with the light. So I must choose… between making problems out of normal life and accepting the season called winter.
I want to choose to accept winter…. how hard can it be? Mairead.
What’s the story? Part 2
(Widen your focus… and see the big picture)
The story of us is part of a big Map. The Map is the representation we have created in our mind of the real world outside our mind. It’s just a representation, it’s not real. Just like the map of Ireland is not Ireland, it’s just a piece of paper that represents a real place. A map is much smaller, so it can fit in your car…. A map does not include everything. A map represents mountains with colours and lines. No one believes mountains are just colours and lines they know that’s just a representation. We know a map is not the country it represents.
(Eat well… but not these….)
But we often believe the map in our mind is real…. “this is just the way I am”, “I’m lazy”, “I have no willpower”, etc., etc. We often believe in the story of us…. It’s not real, it’s just a representation…. like the lines and the colours. It’s a representation of something that was said or heard, something that was seen or experienced… and we hung on to it and deleted any experience of the opposite…. and it’s just a map.
(Rest regularly)
Most of the choosing of the representation of the world is done in our childhood and is influenced by the people around us – our parents, our grandparents, our siblings, our teachers and society in general. We are affected by their representation of the world. Their Map has a strong influence on how they see the world and therefore how we learn to see the world.
If there’s something you want to include in your story, start noticing it in your experience. Mairead.
What’s your story?
(Mount Usher in Ashford, Co. Wicklow)
The story of our lives is not the story of what happened… It’s the story of what we are. The story that starts “I am….” The story we think we became because of our behaviour or our actions. The story that says this is the type of person I am. This story is probably built up from lots and lots of small experiences and things other people told us… From the moment we learned the story of us everything that happened after that had to fit into that particular story. It had to make sense in our story. If it didn’t then it got deleted… We become very attached to our story.
(Strong, beautiful tree even with all its flaws…)
Like a film maker producing a movie about a famous politician – only stories that agree with the filmmaker’s belief about the politician will be included…. if he believes the politician is a wonderful honest statesman then the stories from his life that show him as an honest and a wonderful statesman will be included. If the filmmaker believes that the politician is a dishonest scoundrel then the film maker will depict stories from the politician’s life where he is dishonest and a scoundrel. The filmmaker may be completely honest in his choices, i.e. he truly believes the politician is honest or he truly believes the politician is dishonest.
(At the boundary of Mount Usher there’s a fence. Beyond the fence there’s a field with very old trees. You can either see the fence or shift your focus a bit and see the trees…..)
Same with our choice of what fits into our story – the movie of us. If the story we truly believe about ourselves says we are flawed then we will only include the times we have been flawed into our movie. Even if we have been a good friend at some point in our life we will delete or distort that memory and remember instead the time we were a bad friend. This is in order that our flawed friend story remains intact. If the story of you says you are flawed then fortunately, you can start again with a new story.
Choose something in your story you don’t like and start to notice the opposite. Mairead.
Friday Quote – Shush!
“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” – Rumi
Listen to yourself, Mairead.
Travel stories 