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Friday, December 30, 2011

Things I learned in 2011


Now is the time... for deliciously soppy "best of" lists. Sitting back and reflecting upon the last year, I cannot say that I have done all the things I had hoped to have done. Yet I have learned more that I could have imagined. So here is a list of those lessons. I hope they are as valuable to you as they are to me. 

1. wabi-sabi

The art of appreciating life for what it is.

Via Sarah Wilson... "Wabi sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection... Through wabi-sabi we learn to embrace our scars, rust, uneven finishes and the “bloom” of time they represent."

This beautiful little film The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom illustrates wabi-sabi perfectly.


"Even when the flower falls, we love it. That’s the heart of the Japanese person. Flowers dying is not a sad thing."

Read more here.

2. beautiful people do not just happen

And similarly, people are all the more beautiful for the hardship they endure.

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Read more here. See also The beauty of the well (a reflection on the Queensland floods). 

3. live wholeheartedly



Brene Brown's TedTalk and book, The Gifts of Imperfection, moved me to (try to) be a better, more open, more whole person.

In short...

Connection is why we're here.
Yet we struggle to connect. 
What stands in the way of connection is shame: the fear of disconnection. Is there something about me that if other people know or see it I won't be worthy of connection?
The key to overcoming shame is believing that we are worthy of love and belonging.

Read more here.

Read more »
Posted by Laura Valerie at 9:20 PM 1 comments

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

You are exactly where you need to be


This (from the lovely picture book Everything Is Going to Be Okay) comforts me. It's quells the humming anxiety, which stems from doubtfulness... am I doing the right thing? Have I made the right decision? Should I be doing something else? What?

Steve Jobs says it best, in his iconic Stanford address:

"You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. 
You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. 
This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

Sarah Wilson adds:

* Look out for dots. That is, follow things that are beautiful and interesting. 

* Engage in the dot you’re on. Be where you are… Interested, engaged people get noticed and get moved forward by life.

Things don't always make sense. Life can be sore and confusing at times. But if we look at it this way: nothing is a mistake (even if it is). For life only goes forward so, no matter what, we have to press on. There is no turning back. But instead of pushing and fretting, let's just be. Focus upon exploring potential of the "dot" we are on - the place our choices have led us - and be certain that those choices were the best we could have made at the time. Then - trust that once things don't feel right anymore, it's time to move on to the next beautiful, interesting thing. Life is full of them.

"I wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case."
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Posted by Laura Valerie at 1:42 AM 1 comments

Friday, December 23, 2011

The Christmas spirit


From where I am sitting, Christmas spirit is becoming uncool. Countless people I know are forgoing gift-giving, escaping to foreign cities, catching up with friends instead of family. And that's cool. We can and should create our own traditions if the ones we inherit make us unhappy.

But me? I love Christmas, just the way it is. If nothing else, because it's the one day of the year where everybody stops at the same time. We all stop for different reasons - to enjoy family, to relax, to share good talk and good food, to celebrate the birth of Jesus - yet we all stop, together, united in our stillness. 

Sure, Christmas Day itself can often be a little disappointing. People are disappointing, sometimes. They don't express themselves very well. They behave obnoxiously. They hold onto grudges. They give lazy gifts and arrive late without apology. Et cetera, et cetera, year after year.

But that's half the fun, don't you think? Everything, not just Christmas, is a lot more fun when we let go of our hope for perfect words and emotions and embrace the beauty of imperfection. The incongruity of family and friends is a particularly heartwarming breed of wrong-slash-lovely - the way people have a funny way of mish-mashing together, intertwined by birthright and circumstance, all of these different personalities who don't seem to match but somehow make it work - and the familiarity, competitiveness, tension, the affectionate acceptance of it all.

In essence, what I love about Christmas is the magic that sparks when people come together; the magic of connectedness. The everyday, ordinary kind of magic that is all the more beautiful for its rustiness, holes and misfortune, because it perseveres despite it all, in its tender, fragile state. 

This Christmas will be the last for one of my beloved family members. So we will all be converging in one house, for one lunch - a banquet - to share and to celebrate. I know that nobody will voice why we are really there. It is too hard to say, too uncomfortable, too desperately sad. But maybe that is what family really is, at heart. A shared understanding of the unspoken, of what really matters, underneath all the things that don't. 

So this Christmas, I will relax, laugh and drink wine. Eat too much. Cuddle little children. Express gratitude for terrible presents. Talk and play and try not to be sad when there is so much joy to be had. Collapse in a heap at the end of the day, grateful for another year gone and the next one before me, looming in its unbounded potential.

I will leave you with my favourite Christmas song, White Wine in the Sun, written and sung by the wonderful Tim Minchin, for his baby daughter.



Merry Christmas!

"I do believe in an everyday sort of magic — the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone."
— Charles de Lint
Posted by Laura Valerie at 5:52 AM 0 comments

Friday, December 2, 2011

Equilibrium


"I keep losing and regaining my equilibrium, which is the basic plot of all popular fiction. I am myself a work of fiction."
— Kurt Vonnegut

Here I am, lamenting my inability to write. It's not writer's block, per se. Just a difficulty with settling down, thinking cohesively, being imaginative. Feeling muddled.

And then, serendipitously, I came across the Kurt Vonnegut quote above (via my new favourite site, Brain Pickings). The equilibrium! As always, the problem I am grappling with is not unique to me. And it's not even unique to writers. It's life. It's stories. It's the rise and fall.

The trouble is, sometimes we don't have the luxury of waiting it out. We just need to find a constant balance, for the sake of our career, income, family and sanity. We need to get on with it, no matter how we are feeling at the time. But how?

Apparently, the key is creating as much certainty as possible in our everyday lives, by way of ritual and routine. Waking up at the same time everyday, wearing the same clothes, eating the same meals. When we avoid mundane decision-making, we are clearing the way for creativity and truly innovative thought; according to Sarah Wilson and Jonathan Fields, who refer to this ritualisation as "dropping certainty anchors". Reading Sarah's column gave me one of those lightbulb moments. And it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

As Gustave Flaubert once advised,

Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.

Certainty equals freedom. Banality takes our precious time and energy away from what doesn't really matter, freeing it to focus upon what does: living, loving and creating, with the clarity of mind to  recognise and appreciate truth and beauty whenever we are lucky enough to see it.

"A day in which I don’t write leaves a taste of ashes."
— Simone de Beauvoir
Posted by Laura Valerie at 6:11 AM 1 comments

Thursday, December 1, 2011

A sky full of kindness


I love this little film about London-based illustrator Rob Ryan. He shares a lot of my idealistic philosophies. Love is paramount. People are good. The world is beautiful. We are all connected. 


And listening to him, I realised that my real dream in life is to get to a place where I share his job description. A luxury, of course, that requires doing really, really good, heartfelt work.

My job is to look and think and reflect the world, as I see it. My job is always to be looking at stuff and always be thinking and always be kind of open and be a conduit. 

And a big part of my work is about seeing and appreciating the beauty in the everyday and to make people see how beautiful the world is and how beautiful their lives are. 

The picture above is a limited edition print from Rob's picture book A Sky Full of Kindness. You can buy it from his Etsy store here. 

"We are all the same people we were when we were children. We're just bigger and pretend that we're not."
— Rob Ryan
Posted by Laura Valerie at 6:52 AM 2 comments
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