wisdom

Yes, you can go home again . . . if only in your dreams.

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
ardoch II

My Hometown

Last night, I had vivid dreams of my childhood home in the Red River Valley of North Dakota.  The place where I learned to swim in post-thunderstorm mud puddles, to build elaborate snow and ice tunnels, to discover the magic of reading, to try to walk to the end of a rainbow, to revere and emulate Mae West, to respect the wisdom of my older siblings, and to understand that life sometimes deals out unfairness without warning.

These dreams of last night involved highlights of childhood that were happy, peaceful, and creative.  They were moments that contained laughter, bliss, and sibling camaraderie.  It was a rare gift of benevolent recall via slideshow with me starring as my own little-girl self.  The dreams allowed me to visit with my father, who recently passed over in December, and he took me by the hand and led me on a tour of highlights that reminded me that my early life, indeed, offered shouts of joy that have somehow become strangely muffled in the memories of my adulthood.

Life is what I make of it.  And so is fun and my sense of playfulness.  This past weekend, while writing out my to-do lists on my wall-mounted white board, I caught myself wondering,  This is nothing but work and chores and items of destined procrastination . . . What happened to simply having fun?  I wrote “HAVE FUN!” at the bottom of the lists for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday going forward.

Still, I started to wonder: What has happened (!?) to me and my life such that I am having to start prioritizing fun?   What happened to getting out there and having some good ol’, mud-puddle-stomping, spontaneous fun?  

In an effort to re-gain spontaneous Fun in My Life (back to that concept of planning and prioritizing again!), I am going to try an experiment.  As I seem to need the reminder, I am going to write on my list of to-dos everyday for one month:

Have some fun . . . 

And cross it off my list.  And just see what happens.  And enjoy life.  I want to move out of my current state of Get-‘er-Done to a renewed paradigm of Have-Some-Fun.

Anyone out there want to join me?  And keep me posted on what you do?  For me, it’s time to re-claim that girl who liked to sit on the front porch rail of our house, swinging my legs, and belting out Mae West quotes and tunes (C’mon up and see me sometime!) to any passerby who traveled through our tiny town.  It’s time to start having some Fun!

Mae West: You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

ardoch

Main Street, Hometown

Your Personality . . . & the Glory of the Choice

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Vision Board 058Your personality . . . what is it exactly?  Aside from the usual adjectives of fun or moody or sunny or temperamental or intense or Type A or laid back or . . . what exactly? What does it really mean to be assigned a personality type?

We’ve all pondered the big debate of Nature vs. Nurture . . . how the spark of life is blessed/cursed/or combination-therein by congenital behavior . . . or wait!  Is it actually shaped by environmental and emotional factors?  And then these is all of the vice-versa stuff that leads one to accept and embrace both and then not think much about it.

Fascinating research points to many interesting findings that help us to understand Who We Really Are, our emotional and social intelligence, and our perception of positive and negative influences.  Nature or Nurture?  It is an enormous question that no one can really answer with total authority.  Take the story of the two children — identical twins, actually — standing on the ocean shore.  They are enjoying themselves while the salt water is gently lapping at their toes.  Suddenly, a rogue wave washes over the top of them.  The same wave, the same temperature of water, the same element of surprise.  One of the twins starts to cry and scream and run from the water. The other twin splashes back at the wave while laughing.   While this story would neither withstand nor support the rigors of a research study focused on Nature vs. Nurture, I like it nonetheless.  It gives me pause: Why not laugh?  It’s a heck of a lot more fun than crying and screaming.

And in the midst of all of this wondering and debating and agreeing, I do believe that there is much to be said for the concept of timshel — the Hebrew word for thou mayest.

When I think on topics of this sort, my mind wanders back to a Time of Great Impressionability in my life, and I was reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.  What a book!  Well, “the story bit deeply into me,” and Lee’s treatise on timshel has stayed with me all of these curious years later — a testimony to the notion that life is one great impressionable moment after another.

It is my hope that sharing this gem of Steinbeck’s brilliance and wisdom will not act as any sort of spoiler.  The book is brilliant and one worth reading.  Like life, Steinbeck’s writing is intense and provocative and profound.  He writes the sort of story that stays with you throughout the years.  I thank Mr. Steinbeck for opening my eyes, my mind, my heart, my soul, and my sense of wonder to the notion of thou mayest: “the glory of the choice.”

Last week, I came across this quite lovely Personality Test online.  I normally don’t click on these tests, expecting some sort of hook to be set before you receive your “results,” but something prompted me to go ahead and try this one.  Before reading any further, go ahead and click on the link and visualize your responses to the prompts.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliapugachevsky/this-cube-personality-test-will-absolutely-blow-your-mind?utm_term=.onK9zJNbz&sub=4259074_8744597

All done?

What do you think?  How much of the explanation of your visuals did you feel was accurate?  At the very least, I felt that I was given a sideways glimpse into me — parts of me that are actually true that I generally don’t consciously associate with my “personality.”  I think about Steinbeck’s artistic weaving of timshel into East of Eden . . . and I am reminded that thou mayest carries with it a personal(-ity) responsibility of creative and paradigm-shifting mindfulness that requires daily cultivation, acknowledgement, and celebration on my part.

Personality assessment aside . . . overall, we need not be so hard on ourselves.  I think we sometimes embrace the opinions of  people — people who truly don’t know us — with far too much zeal, and we assign too much authority to the editorializing that is done by others.  We have a proclivity toward jumping into the sinkhole: a morass of self-blame, regret, and guilt that we assign to nature- and nurture-defining personality quirks . . . epic actions that play with our hearts and attempt to define how we choose to forge present moments into future goals and dreams.  Or . . . is this just my personality?

I used to have a quote taped up in every room of my house: Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.  In the midst of one particularly Challenging Time, I was re-reading the quote, and I realized that I needed to make an edit.  I crossed out about to happen and scribbled in happening right now:

Always believe that something wonderful is happening right now.  

The current paradigm of Overwhelm in that moment screeched to a halt, and life felt like it took a gentler curve toward heart-healing and happiness.  When I realized that I had a choice to become someone new on the inside, my whole life shifted.  This epiphany didn’t segue into some neat and tidy story-book ending, but it did nudge me into a new place, such that I could get back into a timshel state of mind: “the glory of the choice.”

toaster ovenI leave you today with the prayer, the wish, the hope, and the thought that today is a good day for you.  A truly good day.  One of gratitude and filled with micro moments that tell you that Now is Now and life is evolving, constantly evolving, as something that is wonderful.  If this moment isn’t all that great, just wait for the next one.  It will be here before you know it — full of promise and full of timshel.  With some refining, life really can be borne from “the glory of the choice:  . . . keeping “the way open.”

Click on the highlighted link below to download today’s free journaling exercise.  Have fun journaling and putting a new spin on perceptions and keeping your way open!

The Glory of the Choice. A Different Spin. journaling prompt

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A reminder that gifts of beauty await when we keep our hearts open.  So lovely.

 

[P.S. Here is the real Spoiler Alert: To read a longer excerpt that discusses timshel in greater detail from East of Eden, click here.  If you are planning to read the book . . . do not click here.]

Good advice from Nicky-Jack

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

Quote from Source Unknown:

“Name: Nicky-Jack Marshall (Aged 96)

Subject: Knitting

Comment: Well firstly I like to add flour to my palms as this gives a great grip on the needles. Also it’s best to keep your cat away from the wool!”

I dearly wish I could remember from where I got this excerpt so I could credit the source. [If it is you, please, let me know, and I will re-post with your reference.]  This is knitting advice from Nicky-Jack Marshall.  She provides us with tips to get a great grip on knitting needles.

And Nicky-Jack helps us to guard against prowling felines who mess up your knitting.  We all know what kind of cat she is talking about.  As you are gently jerking away at the ball of yarn at your feet, the cat pounces, and YOW!  There go those talons into your thin-skinned ankle that is the backdrop for that dancing, fuzzy string of yarn.  Nicky-Jack knows what to do to keep your Zen while knitting.  This woman is one to whom we might want to listen.

I love this woman, and I have never even met her.  In an age where people buybuybuy the best and the most beautiful supplies and tools in order to prepare to take on a new interest or hobby, Nicky-Jack just gets out her bin of flour and gets a great grip on those needles.  Cheap, clean, available.  She gives the cat a toss outside, and sits to knit.  So beautiful.toaster oven

The simplicity of this is what I want my life to reflect.  To hell with the fancy needles, the row counters, the tips for the needles to keep errant stitches from bustin’ a move off your needles in transit. Like Nicky-Jack would say: just flour up those mitts and commence to knittin’.

There is so much wisdom in simplicity.  I have dyed fleece with chemical- and natural-dyes, made my own mordants, hunted lichen in the woods, saved onion skins, spun wool, dog, rabbit, and goat.  I have plied skeins of yarn, niddy-noddied them, balanced them, and knitted with them.  I have felted wool and spun cotton.  I have made a silk cap out of a worm’s cocoon.  All of this cool stuff while Nicky-Jack was producing the goods.

I do believe that my productivity sometimes gets sidetracked by process and the hunt for technique, variety, nuance, and research.  I have experimented with dye baths of lichen and with Kool-Aid.  And I have done quite a bit of knitting.  But if I transfer her wisdom to other areas of my life, I feel pretty convicted.

Like Nicky-Jack’s needles, it’s time to dust up my chi and get a grip on that which is important to me.  On that which I hope to prioritize because it makes me happy on the inside and on the outside.  No one wants to be the teacup that looks happy on the outside but unhappy on the inside.   Dust up my my mandolin, my laptop’s keyboard, my fiddle, my running shoes, my piano, my sometimes-overwhelming research project . . . and toss that cat of distraction that is such a convenient excuse that disallows creativity and flow.

 

Are you caught in Yo-yo Land?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

PROMPT: Is there something in your life that you keep doing over and over again — even though you say that you don’t want to do so?  Something that you know is b-a-d for you?  That is blocking your Bliss?  Is there something that you keep returning to, even though you have vowed that you never would? Are you trying to lose weight, and you have fallen victim to yo-yo dieting?  Do you keep going back to that unhealthy relationship that you know will never allow for mutual respect?  Do you return each morning to that unrewarding job with the maniacal boss?  Up and down and all around — going in loops and circles and reversals?

Is there something that you feel mysteriously and inexplicably tethered to — unconsciously or otherwise– that keeps reeling you back in?

We have all heard the metaphor that life is a river.  That you can never step into the same river twice.  That fighting the current expends a great deal of misspent energy.  That if you go with the flow, things will feel easier.  That there are eddies and currents that will befuddle your senses.  That there are drops in the river that will surprise you.  That there are Class IV rapids that will tip your raft and divest you of not only your luxuries but your essentials.  That any ol’ dead fish can float downstream — it takes a live one to go against the current.  Still waters run deep and narrow waters cut deep.  That a waterfall is the unfortunate realization that you have made one helluva big mistake and are in for the ride of your life.

You get the idea.  There are so many wowza metaphors for rivers.  Why?  Because they are cool and powerful and unpredictable and demand a great deal of respect from anyone who ventures into its current.

But a yo-yo?  Is a yo-yo cool enough to be a metaphor for life and its crazy trajectories?  Just look at the names of yo-yo tricks: the Sleeper, Rock the Baby, Breakaway, Braintwister, Man on the Flying Trapeze, Around the World, Walk the Dog, Invisi-Whip, Buddha’s Revenge.  Look at all of this coolness that can identify life’s mysteries, demonstrate really amazing skill of movement, and explain how to resolve personal problems.  Feeling stressed?  Walk the Dog.  Feeling restless?  Take a trip Around the World.  Feeling like life has become boring? Be a Woman on the Flying Trapeze.  Feeling unmotivated?  Crack the Invisi-Whip on your Sleeper.

At this point, is anyone else ready to simply drop everything and go buy a yo-yo?

As impressive as some of these tricks may appear to be, I am not so sure that I want to continually be reeled back to Point A.  Or Point B.  Or L-M-N-O-P.  Wait, I just realized: I don’t want to be the yo-yo.  I want to be the Yo-Yo Slinger.  I want to be the one spinning the yo-yo into cosmic fantastic-ness. InternetSlang.com defines YOYO as “You’re on Your Own.”  Well, we are on our own.  I am on my own, the Yo-Yo Master Herself.  Spinning tricks and following the arc.

Lest I get lost in Yo-Yo Land, I pull myself back to my original question:   Is there something in my life that I keep doing over and over again — even though I say that I don’t want to do so?  I might want to pay attention to this.  Or at the very least, get out of Reversal Mode and distract myself properly by buying a yo-yo and googling some youtube videos on how to learn some of these very cool tricks.  I might not only surprise myself with an aptitude that defies gravity but divert myself from the unhealthier tether points in my life.

So, how does The Art of Yo-Yo actually translate and guide me on the trajectory of

Life Wisdom?

  1. Around the World –> Get rid of some stuff.  A lot of stuff, actually. Be ready to travel.  And travel light.
  2. Double or Nothing –> Become more habituated to taking risks.  Try Something New every single day.
  3. Over the Falls –> While knowing that life has its share of waterfalls, do not fear the unknown around the bend.
  4. Dizzy Baby –> Don’t be fearful of the tricks of the current.  You will eventually pop out of the eddies.
  5. Stop and Go –> Take time to pay attention and cultivate mindfulness.
  6. Hop the Fence –> Jump the grooves in life.
  7. Forward Pass –> Create your own trajectories and work your own magic.
  8. Wormhole –> Be the Yo-yo Master, not the yo-yo.