Gratitude vs. Disappointment in Hard Times
Creating Art and Life
Last week I touched on the point that I am grateful for the opportunity to paint every day while retired from “work.” Even though it is work and there are skills to be learned and projects promised to complete, it is a joy.
I’ve been thinking about joy. It is a choice.
The world is topsy-turvy right now. I’m unhappy watching or reading the news. I don’t want to be “entertained” into denial or submission. I want to be aware, but I also want to enjoy the gifts I have. It is a precarious, fragile tightrope walk these days.
I think of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter’s tea party conversation.
“There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger!
Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter…”
“ I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.”
FAT CAT…..preview for my English cat idioms book working on for this Fall . Fitting for the crazy times with people in power these days
There are frustrations in these modern times… trying to talk on the phone to banks, waiting in lines at the airports that charge more, tariff wars, robots talking to you on the phone, the daily stock market roller coaster and more… You name it, life can be a mad hatter’s tea party where we are treated more like robots by robots or by workers that are supposed to answer you with fixed robotic answers, if there are even enough humans hired to pick up the phone or sit at the desk. It’s true- greed and business and politics and media and misinformation- it’s all a growing storm of change. Like the painting “Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch (worth googling if you don’t know it). And I think we should be enraged, ashamed, fearful. But then we must also take the time to see the world again. Its beauty, connection, and gifts. Painting reminds me to keep seeing the world and to look at it closer, in a new way.
In all of this, we can choose to be grateful for people and things each day.
I’m not a Pollyanna for seeking the bright side. I would argue that I don’t put my head in the sand as much as I used to. Being grateful and seeking joy is a conscious act in a mad, mad world. Speaking and painting and writing truth and beauty, humor, and peace is an act of rebellion, maybe. Art and expressions of hope might be misread or unseen at the Madhatter’s Tea Party. Hell, it could be part of the madness, but it’s my choice.
It’s our choice to be angry all day or hopeful. It’s our choice to be kind or stingy. To watch or retreat. Act or pause. And believe me, I choose all of these on different days.
Painting is what helps me escape the mad, mad world,
and honor the beauty and silliness of it, forgive us all, and try to make sense of life. Sometimes writing and poetry do the same for me. It’s better for my health than watching reruns of “Cops” and eating a bag of cookies and a liter of Diet Coke. I’ve done those, too. It is a conscious choice to look, to not look away, but instead, turn the head, and look again, and again.
I guess for me, creating is the antedote to what I perceive as my country’s system in decline or destruction, and what I fear with climate change is the destruction of the planet and habitats. It is a dark time. Creating can be a part, a very small part of change , of paying attention, of appreciating, of appreciating our world.
Creativity and the birth of ideas move us on from the death of old ways. Creating and sharing and paying attention is vital to making it through these times together.
When I enter my studio and pick up the paintbrush, I know I’ll be imperfect, without all the skills I want. I know I’ll be trying, experimenting, frustrated, angry, hopeful, and serene throughout. I know the disappointed critic in me in this mad, mad world, needs a gentle, forgiving mother who urges me on to enter a new, better world. In the end, Alice had to just leave the tea party. She had kept trying to make sense of it all when there was no sense… or was there? Regardless, she could step out, move on, and be grateful for the good parts.