As I begin this piece I find myself staring at the Aegean Sea, delighting in the aqua blue waters and small islands full of myriad mountains as we ferry to Athens. After a few years of isolation and stagnation, I am on a Muse revival mission, a journey to deepen the connection with my creative wellspring and capacity for renewal.
This trip has been gorgeous and clarifying so far, full of songwriting exploration and life-giving tears. It has also been challenging, bringing me to account for the ways I have fallen away from my cultivation practices and lost the strength of my connection to inherent joy in the miasma of illness and depression.
How even though I teach about the importance of finding and following our joy, I have felt far from mine these last few years. Anxiety and isolation settled like a veil, a shroud, placing me always in shade even on sunlit days.
I have defaulted back to the familiar idea that work is how we prove our worth and we must toil to earn our place in the world. That we can work our way out of the deep anguish that accompanies wide-scale collapse. And I lost sight of why I work as I do in the first place.
Life rafting
Late-stage capitalism engenders deep dread. I feel a near-constant anxiety crowding my attention, like a gas generator running at the edge of hearing, or a bra that is too tight around the ribs. Sometimes it bubbles into over-functioning that quickly exhausts me, or spills forth in preemptive grieving for projected losses.
To eek out moments of enjoyment, however frivolous they might seem to the part of me trying to put out all the fires, strengthens the muscles that build vitality. It is not enough to just survive. We need glimpses, however brief, of something that feels more like living. Or at least that connect us to our desire to live. So we have both a reason and a way to make it through the crucible of these times.
I am learning how to stop being a sacrifice to capitalism, or a martyr to my own beliefs, and let it be enough that I follow what feels true and life-giving. To stop trying to bully or shame myself into anything and be tender with the limitations and needs of this autoimmuny body.
The paradox here is that when I practice being a devotee to my joy, it leads me to generosity, kindness, and a greater capacity to serve.
I have forgotten the source, but I once heard someone share the affirmation that “Pleasure is my fuel, not my reward.”
I am learning how to let pleasure refuel and revitalize me, not simply as indulgence or indolence, but as one of the keys of the revolution.
Softening into the possibility that joy could be a compass towards the work that is mine to do, not despite my needs and yearnings, but in harmony with my essence.
May it be so.
Riding contrast
As I complete this piece some days later, written in the interstitial moments of travel and creative practice, I am meeting the rich contradictions of Florence, Italy on a rainy May 1st. A day given holy to honor workers the world over, and a day called La Bealtane by Celtic people.
When communal ritual was more common, around this time of year fires were lit and offerings made to pray for a fruitful summer, and the fertility of people and land.
In this centuries-old city, stone streets wind around immense cathedrals, flush with whirring taxis and whizzing motorbikes. The exaltation of traditional craft sits next to corporate megastores. Street art says “Palestina libera” and stop signs have genocida and watermelon seeds added, while soldiers walk around in uniform. An excellent band plays Bob Marley and blues covers about love, while marble statues that exalt murder and subjugation are given awe.
And there are teenagers dancing to the music and laughing.
An old man teaching his daughter how to sew leather, as their family has done for generations.
And watercolorists on the piazza, painting the sky.
We get to learn how to embrace paradox, and listen for the signal of our inner compasses beyond the noise of people trying to dominate us or sell us something.
We get to turn our faces up to the rain, tend the fire, and let the tremulous voice of our true joy lead us to the next real step.