“The soul becomes dyed

with the colour of its thoughts.”

– Marcus Aurelias 

 

 

The trees are piled high with snowy icing from yesterday’s baby-blizzard, every needle, every branch. Bits of blue sky are showing through high clouds.

In short, it is nothing less than magnificent.

I am trying to decide what is different within me today in contrast to yesterday’s dark emotions?

Why, after the art opening, which was fun and well-attended and all things good, did I feel like weeping as I walked to my car?

 

 

What I told myself this morning, was, maybe it was because I felt like I didn’t speak well. It was nothing more than a little talk, spontaneously requested by the organizer of our Altered exhibit. I was trying to be cognizant of taking up too much time. There’s nothing worse than someone blathering on too long, and in my effort to be quick, I think I said a bunch of nothingness.

Then again, I read recently that we often add a narrative explanation to how we feel, when in fact, there is no reason. We paste the story on after the fact to provide ourselves with some meaning when often it is really nothing more than the emotional equivalent of a dark cloud rolling through our interior landscape.

Probably that is the truth…

Then again, maybe not.

Whatever the reasons or whether there really is no reason, I should have said this about my Barkerville Church piece:

 

 

 

I should have told this story where I explain how this painting was inspired by that long-ago story of building a little cedar replica of the Barkerville Church for my grade five (?) school project. Constructing that church represents some of my best moments with my dad. I can still see him kneeling on the linoleum of our kitchen. I think I’m in my flannel nightie, the one Mom kept adding ruffles to at the bottom, because I was ‘growing like a weed’.

I remember the warm blast from the kitchen floor register where I am crouched beside my big strong father.

And now, I want nothing more than to go back and have us meet in some strange new version of time, where he is the age he was then and I’m the age I am now, older than him by more than a decade. I would like to talk to that man and ask him about his hopes and dreams and fears.

He was such a big strong father, terrifying in his anger and hilarious with his crinkly laugh-lined eyes. I realize now how vulnerable he was too, his eternal optimism hidden behind his ‘can-do’ attitude, a facade that crumbled as he aged, revealing his horrible anxieties.

In my talk at the art show, I should have told how I felt compelled to make those angel people with their button-on wings. I would point out that those angels are literally hanging by a thread from a handmade heaven. I should have told how liberating it felt to staple those thrift store Bibles and hymnals onto that board, and then to paint over them with the silhouette of a church that represented my father and the big swirling sky of his love. I should have told how the feathers float and twirl, spinning in new directions every time someone approaches, subjected to the same whims of fate that toss and tease us in our daily lives.

But I didn’t say any of that.

 

 

So, is that why I left feeling so lost? Was it all about missing my dad? That sounds much more likely.

Emotions are such strange and elusive beasts. It passed soon enough, but not until it left me momentarily crumpled in the car.

What if we could imagine all our emotions like inkwell-sized bottles of colour?  If we placed them in a horizontal line, what colours would they be?

Would regret be a deep burgundy? Would it sit beside the dark indigo of sadness, next to the annihilating black of grief, the diamond-shattering brightness of joy? Would happiness look like the clear pale blue of a lake? What colour represents angst? Is it a sickly green? Which colour block would have the most weight? Which colour the most opaque?  Which one the most fleeting and transient?

Each of us would have our own particular palette.

Sometimes life feels imbued with a murky burnt umber, or at much worse times, the deep black of grief bleeds into everything, darkening every colour, draining everything of brightness.

Do we inherit our particular palette? Or are they learned colours? In my more sardonic moments, I’m quite sure my default colour choices were passed down to me from my black-clothed Mennonite ancestors.

There can be no denying that genes play a huge role. Yet I believe many people, in spite of their genetic inheritance, manage to gain their equilibrium through a sustained focus. They wake up with an intention and a commitment to a practise that enables them push against the greys and browns. They do this by engaging the bright colours of a grateful heart.

The key word in all this is practise.

I’m not suggesting for one minute to skip the feelings. I’ve spent enough time in various states of denial to know that is not a recommended choice. I try, instead to tease out the emotion.  Look at it. Name it. Ask myself, “How do I feel?” For me, this is an ongoing exercise, an unlearning of the childhood message that feelings were not to be discussed. Feelings were pretty much verboten.

Doing, on the other hand was rewarded, though not necessarily in this life. Reward was much later, possibly in that far-off Heavenly Kingdom, where those aforementioned Mennonites could gather into a not-so-rocking dark-robed choir.

Practising contentment acts as an enlivening agent and colour enhancer. Contentment is like a medium that enables the colour to spread, to be lighter, more translucent, to lift all the other colours so they don’t sit so heavy and opaque.

And in turn, like an Old Testament string of begets, contentment comes from a place of gratitude.

 

 

It is gratitude that needs to be the daily practise, learning to focus on what I have instead of what I don’t, of what is in front of me at this moment. It is paying attention to being alive here in this world, to focus on my breathing, to feel the pulse of life’s force that imbues everyone and every thing in our world.

This then is my ongoing work;  it is my responsibility to notice how the light gleams on the snow, to feel and hear the pen as it scratches against the paper, to marvel at the softness of a baby’s cheek, to listen most especially to when a baby laughs, one of those chubby-Buddha-belly gurgles.

It is on me to be tender in my focus, to lose the voice of judgement and to seek instead, the warm colours of compassion. Our life’s colours will brighten and lift with these practises and the resulting sparkle is like fairy-dust that glitter-brightens our world.

I know there will be sorrow, hurt, misunderstandings and pain.

And, there is of course, the fun fact that we’re all going to die.

But before we do that, let us practise living in full technicolour.

This then, is my public declaration:

I will remember to choose my colours, to pay close attention to the details of each moment, to paint like a child with both hands dripping with colour and joy. I will pay attention. I will make gratitude a daily practise and look for the compassionate answer to every question. I will remember that sometimes feelings just are. I don’t always have to have an explanation or story for every emotion.

Above all, I pledge to remain kindly curious, about myself and others.

 

 

 

PS

I realize that once again, this post is actually a letter to myself. If you’ve hung in for this whole thing, thank you. I appreciate you joining me as I write to find out what I think.

 

 

“Be kind whenever possible.

It is always possible.”

~ Dalai Lama