Wee Hour Banter: Remembering to See

Writing is hard, but joy comes easily these days. I am rehashing my way through The Artist’s Way* again after a 6 year hiatus, and digging new roots in fertile soil. I’ve been drifting about for a while, tendrils outstretched, and feel ready now to grow down instead of laterally; the plant is strong but the roots are weak.

I’ve put my mind to naming the sources of joy and I’ve found that it comes from being aware of my footsteps and playing a lot. There may be events unfolding around me, but they may as well not be there when I am engaged. Being aware, I’ve found over the years, is what has given me fullness and sanity. Oddly, I ran across a passage in week 2 of The Artists Way that refers to this same phenomenon: Julia Cameron, in describing how her grandmother “made do” with the circumstances her husband left her (financial instability and a wild ride on the waves of success and failure), remarked about her mother’s capacity to be very much in the now, a reporter of life around her. Not focusing on regrets or fearing the future, she was able to immerse herself in experience, a great way to cope and remain sane.
“Attention is the act of connection,” says Julia. “My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her: success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of laying attention.”

How do other people stay sane? Here are a few obvious secrets:
I watched a documentary last night on a female stunt pilot, who enjoyed the way flying dangerously required so much focus that everything else slipped out of her periphery. Surely a big wave surfer feels the same way, risking his life each wave as he directs every neuron to the dynamic matter and energy thundering around him. I imagine a surgeon feels a similar zen, perhaps a more cerebral, fine-motor adaptation of the same principal, or a writer, for that matter (although, as Robert Cormier once said, “The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.”).

Another way I find sanity: watching my enthusiasm of the outdoors trickle down to my kids, watching them web together information on the world around them, making connections that, in turn, connect them to earth. When I am outside appreciating the world around me, it’s infectous; I can’t help sharing it with the kids, with others. It hasn’t taken many brainstorming sessions to discover purpose behind this. I want others to see. I want others to experience and feel joy in his or her footsteps, trying to banish regrets and ignore to-do lists, even if for five mintes at a time. Little bursts of sanity provide hours of empowerment.

I think of other writers who have fostered this capacity for seeing: Annie Dillard, when she wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Anne Lammott and Operating Instructions, Rachel Carson, and the late Provensens, who wrote my favorite picture book as a child: Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm. There are others, but these are favorites. What are yours? Have you seen much lately? Assuming that, like me, you feel periodic insanity, what centers you and makes you sane?

*Other Artist’s Way bloggers have been inspired by Kat’s Paws. I guess I can consider myself one if I just said “others.”