Revealing the Concealed

This post is for my new nephew, Jacob. He is the first grandchild on my side of the family! What I love about him right off the bat is that he is adopted. I have always, always had a heart for adopted kids. I do not have children of my own, but if I did, they would most likely be adopted too. I also love his multiracial heritage, something that gives him a special uniqueness.

Jacob was born on Christmas day (fitting, given that my whole family was together this Christmas, celebrating the holiday and having no idea that a child was being born who was about to become a part of our future). He was born to parents who were dealing with pretty difficult and extreme circumstances, as is true for many children given up for adoption. So I am all the more glad that he’ll be taken into my brother and sister-in-law’s home, a big step in improving his quality of life. He now has a chance to thrive, not just survive (as would most likely have been the case if he was not adopted). How can you not feel excited about that? (And as a side note, I wish adoption was on more people’s radar…there are so many adults out there who desire children and so many children who need a home. Seems like a win-win option that is too often overlooked).

But, I’m not writing this post to talk about the benefits of adoption so much as I am writing it to celebrate Jacob’s birth, to celebrate his arrival into our family, and to say that I am so, so glad that I will get to be his aunt. He will be a precious nephew to me, deeply loved and deeply wanted. Welcome Jacob.

There are many ways to see in life. I guess these ways relate to the many dimensions through which we understand the world…the mind, the emotions, the physical body, the soul, etc. I’ve been thinking lately about the intellectual approach to life, as I’ve been interacting recently with some people who are very smart, witty, and mentally sharp. I enjoy these kinds of people, because in many ways I find them stimulating. However, I’ve been noticing again how empty the intellect can be if you don’t have a spiritual understanding that accompanies it.  You’re left with only the mind, and it is so fallible and limited and often repetitive. But things of the spirit have no limit. They are infinite. There are no bounds. There are always new depths to explore. To me, this is more fascinating. It is a totally different way of seeing, literally a different lens over the eyes that changes your perception of everything.

There is something that can be quite hard about receiving. This may sound surprising in some ways, because generally the idea of receiving is something everyone likes. Who doesn’t want to receive a gift, a paycheck, a compliment, a new friend, etc.? But sometimes I think it is hard to receive what we are offered, because we are fixated on what is not there. Or, we have a “better” idea of what we really want, and this better idea blinds us to seeing what we are being given. We fall prey to dictating our desires, and then become victims to the unintended consequence of finding it hard to receive.

I find I can experience more joy in receiving good things in my life when I have surrendered my own desires. Now, surrender can be a dirty word for some, so to clarify, I’m not talking about giving up desires, becoming desire-less, or any distorted thinking like that. I’m talking about a surrender of desires that leads to freedom. Not a burying of them in the sand, but a holding of them loosely so that they don’t control so easily. (Because is it not true that anything we desire strongly has the propensity to control us?) So, we don’t become free from desire, we become free from its control.

Once this has happened (an often circuitous and arduous process for sure), I find I can more happily receive the gifts that come into my life. I am less likely to overlook them or take them for granted when they appear. I walk more easily into gratitude.

Ah, the mystique of Whole Foods. It gives off that “I am green, I am healthy, I am doing something to save the planet and the world by shopping here” vibe. To top it off, the Venice, CA location has two added components. First, half the people in the store at any given time of day are models or would-be actors, flaunting themselves and their bodies as they peruse the produce aisle and pick up kale and quinoa for their evening meal. It makes you feel like you should be wearing some kind of hip outfit, or at the very least, some make-up or some sort of scarf thrown about yourself in an artistic manner in an attempt to look half-way attractive. However, the model factor is nicely balanced by long-standing hippies from the community and the occasional homeless element, both of which tone down the glamor. At least a bit. Second, there are regular displays of art by local artists and live music on certain evenings. I discovered this the other day, as I ventured over in search of a certain natural supplement that will radically improve my well-being (as all natural supplements claim they will do). A live jazz trio was playing by the checkout lanes and their music echoed throughout the store. I was like, wow, not only am I superhealthy, supercommitted to the planet and supertrendy, I am also now supercultured. The live music made me feel an extra sense of refinement and subtly affirmed my decision to linger in the store and spend more money. In fact, there were so many illusions being propped up at one time, it was hard to keep track.

On the way out, customers will most likely pass the 99 cent store, which is located next door in the same shopping plaza. This immediately brings you back down to planet earth, even if you are still feeling good about your organic produce in your reusable hemp shopping bags. Nothing like two extremes to balance one another out. And actually, this is one of my favorite parts about urban life…a variety of people living in very close proximity. The jazz musicians and models and organic produce, and the bargain hunters and 99 cent merchandise, mixing and mingling, all forming a strange composite which I find fascinating.

I’m always interested in hearing people’s thoughts on what they would change in their lives if they could do them over again, or any significant regrets they have as they begin to reach their twilight years. I like to try and use any perspectives that resonate to make adjustments in my own life, small or big, in order to live my life in the fullest way possible.

I recently came across this anonymous person’s response to the question, “What is your most profound regret in life?”, and thought his insight was worth posting…

“Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I’ve ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing… Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.”

And yet, there must be a reason that we rush, besides the fact that society encourages it. On some level, it must meet a need somewhere within us, otherwise we wouldn’t give in to the compulsion to move at breakneck speed. Maybe we rush to avoid discomfort or pain. Or we rush to forget. Or to fill a hole that won’t go away. Regardless of what it appears to satiate, rushing will only ever serve a function on the surface of our lives and will never manage to penetrate what is going on beneath. And more than that, it will keep us from every really experiencing life. And if we never truly experience life, think of all that we miss. To live in the unrushed moment and let it be enough…that is a difficult, but worthy pursuit.

If you stick with something long enough…eventually things start to happen. That’s how I feel this morning anyway. I managed to be at three different art events last night, and had encounters with people I either recognized or have met before at each one. It’s looking like it’s possible to develop a sense of community in the art world, even in a city as vast as LA. This is quite heartening to me, as the first few years of making art here were relatively void of connections. Artists really do come together and support one another once they find each other.

In any occupation, no one else quite understands what you do as much as those who are doing the same thing. So, no matter how different your art may look from someone else’s expression, artists always share the commonality of birthing something and offering it up to the world in some capacity. This never fails to produce a feeling of camaraderie.

Words can be so nourishing. I had a recent conversation with a friend, a friend who regularly speaks into my life in such a manner. Her words so often feel like literal deposits of life to me. I feel a difference in my overall sense of well-being after we spend time together – her words impart warmth. I am so grateful for this.

Words are indeed powerful, but it is kind of funny that we forget this, given that we live with an abundance of words and information on a regular basis. Perhaps this is why we do forget. I think that living in the information age numbs us to the power of words. We hear them too frequently. And it is human nature to tune out anything that enters our life with too great a frequency. It is the things that happen less frequently that we notice (if we are still paying attention).

So we grow numb to words because we hear them too often, usually large masses grouped together in some sort of meaningless jumble. And then we forget how to use them as well. Or maybe we forget to use them. We forget the power of delivering even one or two well-timed, well-thought out words. And we often miss hearing them when they come our way, because we’re too busy defending ourselves from the rest of the onslaught.

I guess I’d like to become better at tuning out more of the words that literally are just that – information, mindless stuff, neither good nor bad. And spend more time and energy tuning into the less frequent, but life-giving ones. They are like drops of gold to watch for and cherish.

Someone’s romanticized comment the other day about life as an artist made me realize that there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what it means to actually be a working artist. It made me think, huh. If people really understood the reality of making art and promoting yourself, a lot fewer of them would list it as their “if I could do whatever I wanted to” kind of job.

Being an artist who is trying to promote yourself means endless hours of searching for and contacting new locations (whether those are galleries, stores, online competitions, art fairs, blog/article write-ups, juried shows, etc., etc.). It means 98% of the time hearing nothing back after contacting these places, 1.5% of the time being graced with a “no,” and .5% of the time maybe hearing a “yes.” It means believing in your work when there is no external feedback. It means believing in your work when there is negative feedback. It means working in isolation every day. It means having to fuel everything you do with your own drive. (No boss or coworkers to prod you along when you are unmotivated. No regular paycheck to incentivize you. No health benefits. No bonuses.) It means overcoming creative blocks. It means navigating your own path with few guidelines as to “how to do it.” It means learning how to nurture the creative fuel you were born with (which usually ends up being a self-learned skill, as 9 to 5 jobs cannot prepare you for that). It means having to self-learn most things. It means telling people repeatedly that you really are “working,” even though they think this means you are sitting around drinking coffee. It means believing that what you do has value and that the world is better off for it (despite most of the world not understanding this).

Of course, it also means experiencing tremendous fulfillment from using the gifts you were born with and satisfaction from building something from nothing. Yes, there are many enjoyable things about creating, too. But too often, the onlooking world observes artists from afar with a bit of a sigh and a “I wish I could just sit around and paint all day” mentality. Ha. Only other artists (add writers, musicians, actors, name-your-creative profession) can fully understand the all too often non-dreamy reality.

We purchased a new car this weekend and listed our 15-year-old Toyota Corolla for sale on craigslist. Our car is in good running condition, but it definitely has its share of scrapes and cosmetic wear and tear. However, we figured there would still be a buyer for it somewhere. I have found that selling things on craigslist in LA generally takes much longer than when I used to sell things on craigslist in the Bay Area. Up there, I’d get buyers for things within hours of posting, but down here, the response time has always been much slower. So, I figured it would take weeks or longer before we actually managed to sell it. Given this assumption, I was surprised to get at least 12 responses in less than two hours. As I scrolled through the list of emails, I realized that they were all from people with non-English names, many of whom appeared to be immigrants of one kind or another. It made me think of the film, A Better Life, that I just blogged about. One of the people we spoke to was not a recent immigrant, but an elderly Italian man from New York who had just moved to LA to be near his son. He was in the middle of a family crisis, had no car, and was in a very desperate situation. He was the first person who responded, but needed a few hours to find a way to get to our location and literally begged us to hold the car for him.

As I took all this in, I had flashbacks to my case worker days where I heard these kinds of stories all the time. My heart swelled with compassion as I realized that there is a very large pool of people in society who need a reliable car now, regardless of what it looks like or how old it is or what make or model it is or what dings there are in the paint job, etc., all the meaningless things that people with resources waste emotional energy on. It almost made me want to just give the car away for free. It made me remember that need is relative. Yes, we have a need to sell the car to recoup some of the cost of buying a new one. But people in the market for old, used cars at bottom of the barrel prices have needs of a different magnitude.

I used to feel guilt as a young adult at these kinds of discrepancies. I was one of those self-aware children who was exposed regularly to people of different socio-economic backgrounds, including the poor in inner city Chicago. And so part of how I responded to the needs of the poor in my youth was to feel guilt for my own upbringing. But I realized afresh the other night that this is the incorrect response. The reality is, need is need, no matter what form it takes or where it is expressed. Needs extend across class and race barriers, across neighborhoods, families, varying life situations, etc. To be human is to experience felt needs of many kinds. So, no matter the source of the need, compassion is a better and more useful response than guilt. Yes, some needs are more severe than others, but there is no need that is not deserving of compassion. Compassion is just part of what it means to love. And love is always a good response, regardless of the particular life situation that is presenting itself.

So, we ended up selling the car to the man who was in crisis. He found a way to get to us and seemed very happy to have solved at least one of the many problems he was currently facing. It felt like a good exchange all around – our need to sell was met, as was his need to get a reliable car quickly, and it made me wish that these kinds of resource exchanges happened more frequently. There is something about in-person interactions that is so much more real and compelling than just connecting loosely to some larger organization or entity. In-person exchanges allow us to know a bit of one another’s stories. They remind us that we actually do have the ability to meet one another’s needs if we’re aware of them.

Ah, the lure of pretense. I admit even I, a self-proclaimed pragmatic realist, can still be seduced by illusion. But generally, it is truly one of my pet peeves in life. I was reminded of this awhile back after attending a social gathering that was immediately uploaded to facebook (as seems to happen for everyone under, say, 32). I’ve already talked about my love/hate (well, let’s say predominantly hate) relationship with facebook. The main contributing factor to this feeling state is the overabundance of illusion in the flurries of postings. Photos are an obvious example. Yes, photos can and do say a thousand words, it’s just that we really don’t always know what words they are saying. We think we do, and we make assumptions all the time based on these thoughts. But the problem is, these assumptions are often inaccurate. We misinterpret, we construe reality to fit our own needs and wishes, we envy what appears to be someone else’s reality (and often times is not, if you bother to dig just slightly below the surface), etc.

It’s funny to me that I’ve ended up in what one could argue is the capital of pretense, LA, after being raised in such a real and down to earth part of the country. One thing I do in fact miss about the Midwest is how real people really are. What you see is generally what you get. You rarely encounter fakeness of any variety. People in California have often told me how genuine I seem (and they usually say this in an admiring way). But it always sounds a bit funny to me, because I still tend to think, well, isn’t everyone? I generally really mean what I say, and when people get to know me, they are really getting to know me. However, I’m learning this is not the case for everyone. I suppose I could learn to use a bit of pretense to my advantage, as some situations are better handled with a little less realism. I guess living in the land of actors could help me with this endeavor. However, until then, I am stuck with my grounded Midwestern self and sharp intuitive sense for anything less than real.