Free Form

No matter how carefully I try to arrange flowers for still life photographs, they always look best when I stop trying—and just throw them down on the concrete floor or plop them in a vase. The harder I work to make things look perfect, the less joy I find. It doesn’t happen often in life, things just falling into place, but when it does, I take the lesson to heart. At the heart of an overfunctioning life, I ask myself: what happens if I stop? I’ve been pondering this question from Kate Bowler, Why is my light always facing out and never in?

The Truth Will Set You Free

But not from constraints, responsibilities, or commitments.

I’ve read a lot of self-help books over the last ten years or so. So many that I’ve promised my therapist I would stop trying to help myself in this way. Too much of a good thing. Too much trying. And still, when my friend recommended the book Joyful, Anyway by Kate Bowler, I bought it right away and dove in.

I’m glad I took the chance. I can usually tell within the first few pages of a book or the first few lines of a post, if it’s for me. I generally steer clear of anything that promises to make me happier, healthier, smarter, richer and so on with 5 easy tips or 10 proven strategies. I feel deep disappointment when people over promise and under deliver, which happens so often, that I am fairly suspicious of high expectations and positive vibes. I’ll put forced gratitude in this category, too.

But this book is different, and I find that simply reading the truth as I know it to be is making me feel significantly more peaceful, accepting, and yes, joyful. I’m only up to page 49, but here are a few of my favorite passages.

On deep bittersweet longing. That’s who we are; humans are the species with a hole inside us.

Don’t we always feel a gap in our lives? At this moment aren’t we all missing someone, managing a loss, or struggling to achieve something just beyond our grasp?

We are never enough for ourselves and we always want more. . . This is doubly painful because we feel ashamed of our inability to feel grateful.

The most unforgivable things will happen to you. What happens, happens. And there will be no apology.

We want to carry it all with love, with grace. And this. There are always loads to be carried.

Sometimes we feel like we might burst because it is all so much—too much—and yet never enough.

We cannot truly have everything. Or even most things.

It’s not that I am pessimistic or apathetic or even that I will stop trying. It’s more that I am finally conceding that there cannot be joy without suffering.

Joyful Living

I’ve been explaining to my husband for some time the way my body operates. Because we are both science majors, I use an example of a permeable membrane in a cell. I am a person who is mostly open so that things pass into and out of me easily. This brings me great joy, and also great sorrow. I feel things deeply. Lately, I have been wondering if this is healthy. Do I lack healthy emotional boundaries?

Vintage Roses and Lilacs

Westclock and Buttons

But, a friend recommended a new book by Kate Bowler, Joyful, Anyway. Kate explains what it means to be porous. “You are open to forces you did not generate. When joy arrives, it visits you. When suffering comes, it may be coming from somewhere larger than your own circumstances. The porous self is not the master of its own experiences with the world. And (mostly) this is experienced as a relief. You do not have to manufacture meaning to be living a deeply important life. Meaning comes to you.”

Terracotta Pots and Compost Bin in the Garden

That part of myself that I was so quick to condemn and try to banish, my vulnerability, might actually be a gift and my pathway to joyful living. I can see that it is often my judgement about my feelings, that secondary appraisal, that is often my downfall. And this changes everything.

Learning and Leaning

I am not a photography stylist, and the idea of carefully arranging bits and pieces with tweezers does not appeal to me. I already struggle with a large dose of perfectionism, so it doesn’t make sense to heap on more of the same. But I am good at noticing when things are naturally arranged artfully. And I’m really good at stopping everything else to pay attention to something that catches my eye.

Analyzing, researching, organizing, planning and figuring things out—these are my strengths. I love to think big and often come up with creative solutions to problems. But I am also driven, anxious, and wired with alarms set to go off way too often for reasons I cannot explain (though EMDR therapy is helping me to level out my nervous system).

I am happiest when I am deeply involved in work. And in the case of photography, work is play and play is work. This is good for me. I’m thinking of signing up for a summer online workshop offered by Paul Sanders, Stillness of Summer. It’s always about how many ways I can stretch a dollar . . . I’d love to take this class with a friend. If you’re interested, send a note to let me know and we can learn together.