Sometimes it’s in reaching back to the touchstones in my life that I find my way forward…
I’m sitting at my computer working on a design drawing. It’s almost midnight and yet again as I’m preparing for a presentation Joni Mitchell is singing in the background. And I’m thinking: nothing’s really changed; two lifetimes ago I was doing exactly this thing to this very same song. The design is a bit more complex and technology may have simplified the process, but inherently, in my heart and soul, I am still doing what I did, with the same passion, the same intensity and the same emotions that I had when I first heard “A Case of You”.
Loves have come and gone and come again in my life- including and especially my children who remain at my center; but the connections of creativity and passion- love, music, design, ideas- still intersect in my heart and soul. My daughter’s daughters dance with me now. I am a woman with time and experience under my belt, but in the center I remain…..me. The “me” I already was those many moons ago has changed very little.
I was driving home talking with a close friend about the things in our lives that “drive” us. She heard a theory that very often our earliest memories are a precursor to what we end up doing in our lives. In my case that’s quite true, and I wrote about it- the “yearning” created by seeing artists in my old neighborhood is a direct link to my eventual work. I’ve always painted and drawn, and my design work is directly related to a love of visual expression. And the insistence of my teachers, parents and everyone else that I would never be able to make a living through “art” was totally misplaced. It’s all I’ve ever done, and I’ve managed quite well, thank you. More remarkably, I still love what I do. And when one has to spend at least three quarters of one’s life working at something, it’s pretty important to follow our passions.
But what is more fundamental to me is that I don’t feel any different. I’m still that girl with Joni singing my song. Oh, I’ve added and subtracted, won and lost, cried and kissed, gotten glasses and a new hip. But I’m still me. Not much has really changed.
Somehow I thought it would be different- I thought that time and experience would add up to…..something. Some magical wisdom, some experiential cognizance that could only come with all the hurt, loss, love, survival and growth that comes in a life lived over half a century. Really? Time is irrelevant. Experience is in the moment, and the reverberations of my story may have impact, but I am still that girl. I just look (a little) older.
I live my life with great appreciation for its brevity, for the colors that unfold; with joy for the songs that get sung and sorrow for those unsung; with an unquenchable curiosity for what can happen next and with a marvelous and never-ending sense of wonder at the surprise that life… is. No innocence in that- I’ve experienced much of the worst that life can bring our way, and much of the best, from the dreaded nadir of hurt and loss to the exhilarating zenith of birth and rebirth. One can’t exist without the other and I prefer to live with as much awareness as I can muster for both.
And I can still- miraculously, blessedly, with great thanks- fall in love. I can still get past my sorrows to see magic in another sunrise, sunset, ocean view, falling leaf. Just like children, there aren’t two alike, but my awe in their beauty is the same. I still, with great fortune, love the process of design- of finding solutions, of creating harmonies and seeking simple solutions in what I do.
We lose, we gain and our lives are most blessed by the happy accidents and intersections that make us feel. And sometimes it’s the great sorrows that remind us what that means. Do what you love, live with your dream and life will continue to renew itself.
Tomorrow morning I’ll look at the sunrise again. I’ll play Joni Mitchell and sing along as if I was 15. Because, really, when you get past the façade, I still am…
