What If You Always Have Enough Time?
How slowing down and paying attention can deepen your creativity and enjoyment of life, plus a resource to help you kindle your creative practice
“Even now, with the natural world in so much trouble—even now, with the patterns of my daily life changing in ways I don’t always welcome or understand—radiant things are bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world. I mean to keep looking every single day until I find them.”
—Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows
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A few weeks ago I wrote about paying attention and how that is a key to happiness, healing, wonder, and creativity.
Making art is all about paying attention. It both demands and gifts a fierce attention to the moment, to details, to process. That’s part of why I love it so much. As I mix different colors of watercolor paint to get just the shade I want… As I search for just the right phrase to capture the morning light or a passing mood…As I listen to shifts of tone brought by differing levels of pressure of my bow against the violin strings…I am paying attention and brought powerfully into the moment.
A key ingredient in paying attention is slowing down.
How many things do you do with a subtle or not-so-subtle sense of hurry, to get it done, rather than to be enjoying the doing? Brushing your teeth, washing the dishes, emptying the dishwasher, cooking dinner, even eating dinner, walking or driving somewhere, sorting through emails.
I’ve noticed even when I’m making a drawing, this sense of hurrying to get it done can creep in. It robs me of the delicious moment, the enjoyment of the process, the awareness of details. It robs me of my life.
Conversely, when I slow down, I get to savor the sensual experience of drawing, consider my creative decisions more spaciously, and the drawings tend to come out better.
What if you slowed down enough to enjoy what you are doing and let go of obsessing over getting it done?
I had a powerful experience last week around this. For the first time in two years—due to the healing journey I’ve been on—I got together with two of the women I’ve been dancing with for over 20 years to practice a movement form known as Authentic Movement.
This practice involves moving with your eyes closed and listening deeply to your body, allowing it to move as it feels drawn to move. It also involves at least one person witnessing the mover(s) and attending to what arises in themselves as they witness.
I wasn’t sure what my body would let me do, how I would feel that day. Would moving cause a flare-up of pain?
While walking the short distance from my car to the studio, my belly started to hurt just from the jostling of walking—uh oh. But then, when I started to move slowly in this mindful way in the studio, I was absolutely amazed to discover how creative and expressive my body was, all the remarkable movements and postures I found myself in—and the most extraordinary sense of profound pleasure, awe, and happiness flooded me.
Another remarkable moment came as I was witnessing the other women move. At one moment, they came together and had a tender encounter. Just as they came together, I noticed there was only one minute left on the timer before I was supposed to ring the bell. “Oh no!” I thought, “I don’t want to cut this interaction short.” But then, just before the minute ran out, they moved apart and there was a natural sense of an ending. I rang the bell right on time.
As it was my turn to move after that, I had a sudden visceral experience with the thought, “What if I always have enough time?” What if I always have enough time for everything I truly want and need to do? Including, what if I have enough time left in my life, even if it’s only a year? I felt deep peace and joy.
What if we always have enough time? What if the whole construct of scarcity of time is a big illusion, part of the big lie of not enough that pervades our culture, drives our economy, is at the heart of all advertising?
In this week’s Wonder Sparks, I offer you a practice to help you slow down, enter the delicious enoughness, and compound the pleasure, creativity, and wonder in your life. Paid subscribers get access to the Wonder Sparks, along with other perks. For instance, this week below, for paid subscribers, I share some new art explorations of mine and a fabulous new resource to help you play with visual art.
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