Find the Fun

Reaching into your heart and mind and pulling out art should not be a chore. If you are agonizing over it, you’re missing something — unless it’s a fun agony, like the agony of challenging your brain to pull out the answer in a trivia contest: “Oh, I know this one! I’m sure I do! It’s right at the tip of my brain.”

The other day I sat down and a poem spilled onto the page in a four-minute burst. That was fun! Over the past week or so, I have filled my journal with page after page of thoughts and random scenes — it has been fun, the words and I playing with each other.

I love how words can make you laugh, cry, and realize great truths, if assembled in the proper order. One of those “career aptitude tests” I took as an emerging adult concluded I might enjoy architecture, and word-smithing is a kind of architecture — building a story from the ground up, pouring the foundation, and creating a structure that stands the test of time.

There’s an oft-quoted saying, “When you find what you love, you won’t work a day in your life.” Well, that’s not true — everything involves work. I worked pretty hard the other day trying to whip the garden into shape, and there are days and sometimes whole seasons when I really have to make an effort to get the right words out.

The saying only, um, works if by “work” you mean something you really don’t want to do, but you have to do it to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Work that you love is still work, but it’s fun, it gives you a sense of accomplishment; you work every day but you enjoy it. It’s not “you won’t work a day in your life” as much as “if you had a choice, you’d be doing this work anyway.”

Find the Fun — find what you love — and watch the words or the melodies or the images or the sculptures or the landscapes come pouring out of your mind. The agony and the ecstasy of making art — come on, it’s fun, if you’re doing it right.

Maybe that’s why sourpusses scoff at artists who are trying to make a living at it — “That ain’t workin’” because work is not supposed to be fun. Sez who?

See the beauty

A cardinal alights on the bird feeder and pecks away, joined by a mourning dove. That brilliant flash of red is a shout against the quiet greens and browns of the foliage. I suppose he must survive by being constantly alert and aware — or perhaps his primary predator is color blind? That would be more evidence of a Creator, who would craft a beautiful bird and a predator who can’t see the beauty.

“Can’t see the beauty” — Isn’t that a common attribute of all predators? One who preys on others only sees the prey, not the unique beauty of the individual they victimize. All sorts of mayhem occurs when you lose sight of the individual. It’s so much easier to invade and destroy a victim when you have stripped him or her of their humanity.

A squirrel arrives at the feeder. Why do I consider the cardinal worthy of feed but hesitate about the squirrel? Have I judged all squirrels instead of this hungry individual? On the other hand, most birds swoop in, take a little food, and swoop away, while most squirrels set up camp and eat their fill.

Still, I take time to see the beauty. This squirrel is risking what he perceives as danger from the ferocious golden retrievers on the other side of the glass door, and still he mounted the odd wooden structure jutting out of the back of this unnatural dwelling. Perhaps some of my 5-pound daily allotment of bird seed can be a reward for his courage.

The conundrum of the bum knee

I was walking toward a restaurant for a dinner with old friends a year or so ago, when one of them approaching called out, “Whoa! How did you hurt your leg?”

That honestly was the first time I became conscious that I often walk with a pronounced limp. My left knee has not been my friend for more than a decade, and for several years I guess I have been in denial. Most of the time I don’t notice the pain, but apparently my gait does.

I’ve never been interested in a knee replacement, and the one time I started to consider the possibility, there was an outbreak of obituaries of people who “died from complications of knee surgery.”

The topic is on my agenda for my annual checkup, though, a few weeks from now. I hope to make a little progress on the weight-loss front before then, too. I have long thought that part of the problem is the extra strain I have placed on this 6-foot-1 skeleton that went the first 44 years supporting less than 200 pounds, and I’d love to see how improved my health would be if I got back down to that mark. The problem there is, I haven’t weighed less than 200 pounds for about 30 years.

That doesn’t mean my suspicions aren’t correct. Let’s see if I can muster the discipline to get there.