Monday, March 22, 2010

Insecurities = Boo.

Claiming the Sacredness of Our Being....
Are we friends with ourselves? Do we love who we are? These are important questions because we cannot develop good friendships with others unless we have befriended ourselves.

How then do we befriend ourselves? We have to start by acknowledging the truth of ourselves. We are beautiful but also limited, rich but also poor, generous but also worried about our security. Yet beyond all that we are people with souls, sparks of the divine. To acknowledge the truth of ourselves is to claim the sacredness of our being, without fully understanding it. Our deepest being escapes our own mental and emotional grasp.

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The above quote comes attcha' from Henri. J. Nouwen....source of all wisdom...or at least, a whole lot of it. I post this today as a reminder to myself, mainly because over the last 2 weeks I have had a really difficult time doing just this - that is - "claiming the sacredness of my being". I guess it's normal, but as I have been venturing out of my comfort zone lately into new and relatively uncharted territory in work and life, although inspiring at times, it has also brought out some of my deep insecurities. I have found myself lately thinking things such as "I am so bad at this...I am not as good as so-and-so...why do I even bother...I am so fat...I am so unaccomplished...I haven't done enough in life...what's the point...this is probably just a dumb idea...". The list goes on and on and on and on. There is just a lot of self consciousness happening that is really hindering me in enjoying things. And that bothers me. It's the demon of perfectionism creeping in. AAAAaaarrrg. It sometimes stifles every creative urge that I have. No good.

"Our deepest being escapes our own emotional grasp."
I think this really is the crux of the issue. I am mostly completely out of touch with my essential essence. It's a total mystery to my adult self. The only time I may have been slightly aware of it was as a very young child. And then.."poof"....it's gone.

Speaking of which: Today, as I was preparing for a class drinking a coffee I was observing 2 little girls playing total imagination games with each other. At one point they were playing "Dentist" and the one little who was the dentist girl says to the other "Wow - look at your tooth I just pulled out! So Yellow - you really need to come and see me more often" Then she held up the imaginary tooth for the other little girl to see, and she stared at the invisible thing, and as if it was totally real she exclaims "Wow - I see what you mean. Reeeeally yellow!"

I'm not sure what exactly it was about that exchange, but it made me really wish that I was 4 again and absolutely wrapped up in the moment, and not in my weird little inferiority complex.

Anyway - that is my thought for the day. totally
peace out.
-jc





Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Do it now


Hi! I'm back in the blogosphere after a very long hiatus. The photo above was taken by a friend of mine....he found it painted on a wall. Anyway, this will be my mantra for the coming year. And I feel that, so far, I have been pretty successful!

News Update: I am currently doing a 4 month internship with an amazing Theatre company in Toronto focused on community arts. The Theatre company is called Jumblies Theatre. It has been a very busy and extremely inspiring 2 months for me. After many years of trying to find truly meaningful work that does not burn me out, suck me dry, or leave me bored and bereft of creativity I feel like I'm finally in a place where the pieces of my somewhat insane life experience actually fit. It is a rather euphoric experience!

In addition to the internship I am also in school for Early Childhood Music Education. Busy times.

For those of you who may be wondering, yes, I am still technically based in Guelph, but I am splitting my time between the big city and the small city right now. This means that I spend a giant chunck of my time on buses or some other form of transit. But it's worth it, and also really nice to be able to escape the mad frantic pace of life in the big T dot. For example, not having to deal with getting through crowds of pedestrains staring at thier iphones is a nice break. Toronto's newest epidemic is the iphone. Arg.

So, this was my somewhat boring news update.
I leave you with the quote that bears repeating:

You don't need TIME
and perfect conditions
Do it now
Do it today
Do it for 20 minutes
And watch
Your heart....Start....Beating.

later skaters,
-Julia