Monday mornings I have developed a ritual of watching Super Soul Sunday on OWN (Oprah Winfrey’s Network, if you’re not familiar) because I record the episodes and go to church on Sunday mornings, when it airs. This particular new episode (I record and save them all, by the way) is an interview with Nate Berkus, because he’s got a new book out titled “Things That Matter”. I have long admired the work of designers in transforming spaces and making them beautiful, but oddly enough, I’ve never made my own spaces beautiful. Over the course of the interview Nate talked about how we’re taught that things aren’t important, that people are what matters most, and while that’s true, things still do matter. The things we see, the things we touch, they can hold memories or reflect things back to us that make our hearts sing. Tears began streaming down my face, because I suddenly realized that I have been waging a huge war inside myself for my entire life over his exact words. I have wanted to fully give myself to the creation of art, but I have always battled this resistance to valuing material things. Yet, I’m an artist. I love to make beautiful things and I love beautiful things, but I’ve always harbored a GREAT resistance to wanting and having beautiful things. The profundity of what he said was reverberating throughout my entire body. What seemed like such a simplistic, honest, and even common sense statement just grabbed my soul and shook it vigorously. I think we all have those moments from time to time where something so simple and so true just smacks us hard into a deep state of realization, like a brick flying into our forehead, waking us up from a lifetime of sleep. This was one of those for me.
As the conversation continued, Nate talked to Oprah about the importance of great design and how it’s only great if it reflects the people who live there. He discussed the places Oprah has lived and how she really has been so busy that she’s never lived anywhere, never lived in a space that reflected her. She is working with a designer now on both de-cluttering her home, keeping only the things that matter, and also on designing a beautiful space that reflects her. At this point I burst into tears. I have NEVER lived in a space that was a reflection of who I am, because I have never allowed myself to have beautiful things or live in a beautiful space. Then I wept even more as I realized what an exact reflection that is of how I have always lived inside myself. The space we live in outside ourselves IS a reflection of the space we live in inside ourselves. I can look back at my entire journey through life, compare my external living quarters with my internal living quarters, and see a mirror image of myself in life as I was living it. I have always had a lot of amazing books, art materials, and art projects going on, but for the most part my living quarters, both in and out, has been a confusing and cluttered MESS. Isn’t that interesting?
Having nice things doesn’t mean having expensive things. It means recognizing the importance of what is beautiful in you and living in a space that is host to that beauty which feeds your soul. Right now, for example, my heart has been singing as I painted my black filing cabinets white, with a destroyed look, and I’m now almost finished with the desk as well. And I could feel, as I began, the great joy in doing this project, but also the resistance in myself to allowing myself to spend time working on something in my own home, because “things don’t matter”. Well, as A Course in Miracles states, “BEWARE the danger of an UNRECOGNIZED belief.” I’m an artist. Beautiful things and making things beautiful makes my heart sing. Why would it ever be unholy to make a living space a beautiful reflection of everything I love? What an insane idea that this isn’t OK. What a sick thought to think that things don’t matter at all. Nate said it best when he connected his internal, spiritual love with the design of his home, as well as connecting the internal, spiritual love of other people with the design of their homes. And there it is. The missing link for me. Things matter, great art matters, because it is an expression of the spirit. It’s OK to hold love and sentiment for the material, tangible things that make our hearts sing. Beauty in the material world is like a map back home to the beauty of the spiritual world. It’s a map back home. What a mind-blowing AH-HA moment. It’s like a massive weight I didn’t even know I was carrying has been lifted from my shoulders. I’ve desperately wanted to believe in art, all art, as something profoundly important. Now I can do so with every fiber of my being. Now I know why the importance of art that I’ve always felt, but never fully understood, is true. I’ve seen, recognized, and even spoken pieces of this truth over the course of my life, but today I got the great big picture understanding of why art is important and why it’s OK to love it. Now I feel free to wholeheartedly give myself to my work in creating art, because I can wholeheartedly believe in its value and purpose.
It’s also interesting to think back over the years and remember how many people wanted to visit my home after seeing some of my artwork, thinking that my home would be as creative and beautiful as some of the art I produced. Yet, this has always elicited panic in me, because my home has always been a messy hodge podge of areas in which I was creating stuff and things strewn about my home with no great thought at all. Also interesting, I have never placed a single piece of artwork that I have done on the wall, EVER. So what does that say about me? I have trouble inviting people, and myself, into my heart-space. My heart has always been mostly closed. Like… you can come this close to me and then I put my hand out or push you away. I sat in disbelief at this realization and thought, yeah. It’s really true. How openly have I loved? How raw and real have I loved?
Well, it’s no wonder I’ve attempted to start my own art business multiple times over the course of my life and have always struggled. If I withhold love from myself, I withhold it from the world and vice verse. If I withhold love from myself, I’m withholding it from my art, my business, and everything that I do is therefore inhibited. I realize now that much of the love I have given has been from a false sense of self. For example, as a waitress, I was very loving and caring to all of my customers, but I felt free to do so only while I was operating in that role. Not because of where I was vibrating within myself. I was playing the part of the loving, caring, bubbly, I’ve-got-myself-together person that I could portray at work, but wasn’t true at home. I want to be the loving, caring, bubbly, I’ve-got-myself-together-person for real, not just in the roles I play in life. I want the loving core of who I am to shine through every single thing I do in my life. I want my home to reflect it, my relationship with my wonderful boyfriend to reflect it, my artwork to reflect it, and ultimately my career to reflect it. And I want to happily and heartily invite people into my home to see the beauty of who I am and the reflection of that in conjunction with the loving core and beauty of my relationship with my boyfriend. Our home will, from this point forward, be a reflection of who we are individually as well as together. And it will be creative and beautiful, because we are children of God. We were born creative, powerful spirits (as we all were) and I think it’s time to claim that birthright and begin dressing our physical surroundings in the material world version of what clothes our souls. Amen.
The ART of Life 