Still pondering the question,
How do you guard your soul?
That's what I was writing about yesterday, when I complained about Sister changing the color of a square in her baby quilt because of outside advice.
A couple people weighed in: It was a good change; outside help is, in fact, helpful.
Yes!
It is good to ask for help and feedback when we're creating--pictures, words, quilts, music, food--a life--whatever.
I, myself, don't like Sister's quilt better after she took outside advice--I think it looks closer to Laura Ashley––but I grant that some will.
I guess she does. And it's her quilt, after all, her life.
But, what I see in my own life and all around me is not a need for more feedback, but a need for more encouragement (from within, or without) to be free to even start to create, and to carry on; to get it wrong, and to make a mess--to fail.
Or, in the political realm, to act, to resist, to build, to repair.
To DO SOMETHING.
We all fail, every day. It's normal.
How to build and guard the strength of soul to withstand that?
I see so many people not even starting: denying they are creative at all or that they can take any social action.
Or, they ask for Permission to do any thing.
Fear is a limiting factor.
Build up your bravery.
Give yourself your own permission slip.
Then when the world falls apart--
when there's a pandemic, or ICE is at the door;
or, almost certainly if we live long enough, we get physically frail and immobile--
we'll have that iron in our soul, or that willow. Or whatever invisible stuff you are made of.
It's like what Ben at the gym teaches in the physical realm:
How to get physically strong--not to look buff (well, not only 😄)––but to do the work of building and maintaining a just society--whether that's tangling with ICE or helping carry someone's grocery.
That's his motivation to be strong, anyway.
I love that he says you need NO physical props to do it.
You can get strong using the weight of your own body alone.
You can do it in a prison cell.
________________________
I'm talking in generalities, but really it's personal--
it's my own to figure out, for myself.
Sometimes I rant against things like sister giving up her color choice because I want (selfishly) to see other people figure out their own color vocabulary,
. . . or their own political path.
Or whatever.
I want others to go first and light my way.
Ha. Others can help, but...
Light your own way, Fresca.
The time to do this--to build soul strength--is BEFORE.
Before the heavy stuff happens.
Learning to meditate when you're in pain, a teacher said, is like learning to meditate at a rock concert.
I saw that so clearly during 2020--with Covid and the murder of George Floyd, there was no time to develop the Soul/Self.
We could only act and react in the moment out of who we already were.
It was like a dress rehearsal.
Now, we have come to These Times.
We can call on whatever we learned during the past five, six years.
What was that again?
Okay, for myself, it was the frightening realization that civilization is a fragile construct that can disappear really, really quickly.
And, weirdly, I felt the freedom that comes with that--and the responsibility, should I choose to accept it.
I saw it all at once.
On March 16, 2020, the last night businesses were open before lock-down, Housemate and I went to our neighborhood pub.
They were closing early at 8 p.m., and at 7:30, the servers started putting chairs up on tables in the back and turning down the lights.
Before we left, I went to the restroom in the back, and as I returned, walking forward through the dark and empty tables, I vividly sensed:
"Our world as we know it is being rolled up."
Civilization is stage set, and it was being struck, to be taken away and stored.
Would it be returned?
It has been returned, but the mice have been at it, eating away supports and joints that held it together.
Other parts have been strengthened! Are braver, smarter.
Example: Gen Z actors who push back at Hollywood:
"I am not a piece of meat."
Did you see this?
Last month Millie Bobbie Brown of Stranger Things said to paparazzi who had been yelling at her to smile, ‘Smile? YOU smile’,
before walking off.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/18/hollywood-stars-gen-z-millie-bobby-brown-jenna-ortega
I LOVE THAT. Go, the children! (She's twenty-one now, but I only saw season 1, and I think of her that age--eleven.)
Anyway, the freedom--the invitation--that comes with this realization that rules are social constructs is that I, too, do not have to follow the rules.
I don't need a permission slip.
I can (I have to) determine for myself what I care about,
and find ways to support that.
Institutions can be efficient forces for good.
Support libraries!!! sewage plants!!! voting registration!!!
Ask for help.
Get a gym coach.
Hold each other's hands!
But I don't have to be part of social services to give someone mittens.
I don't have to be part of a creative collective to print and hang up posters.
Douglas E., the experimental musician who comes to the store, when he saw my God's eyes on the fence said,
"You should have an exhibition."
I said, "This is an exhibition."
He laughed. (I love him.) "You're right!"
____________________
So, I'm working on this.
Trying to answer this question, How do you guard your soul? is a good exercise.
Must think more on it. And do more.
How 'bout you? Thoughts?
____________
P.S. I would just add,
Developing soul strength is not a matter of privilege.
In fact, this is something I see that people with less social privilege might (might) be more likely to do--
because they don't have the ease and comfort to cushion the soul, they may have dug deeper into soul resources.
Or they might not! Quite the opposite, they might have become more stupid and brutal.
Or maybe you join a cult, a gang, a political movement, for protection, meaning...
I'm not romanticizing powerlessness!
It erodes the Self and grind down the Soul.
It's the pushing back that builds soul strength.
If the weight is too heavy,
it's not possible to push back:
you can't breathe; you're crushed.
The most cushioned, on the other hand, may not have had to push to develop an inner relationship with their Invisible Strength.
Or we may have!
After all, central heating doesn't protect you from soul pain.
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