motif

There are times in my life when happiness seems to be elusive. Struggle as I might to rise above my circumstances, I feel as if it is something only reserved for those who have good jobs, a nice house, a healthy family, and "enough" money. Although at first you may deny that you struggle as I do, deep down I think we all honestly do struggle with the belief that happiness is something to be obtained when all the other things in our lives "fall into place". I know I am always embarrassed to admit this, but my emotions always reveal the truth as to what I believe.

It is my motif...a pattern in my thinking that I have prayerfully been addressing these last few years. (Perhaps you can relate?)

I spend so much time dreaming, sometimes chasing, after that elusive happiness, that I fail to recognize that it has always been near and available to me because it is not dependent upon my circumstances. It is dependent on my choice to find it in the things that circumstances cannot take from me: the love of my family, the laughter of my children, meaningful friendships, the gifts of creativity, the unconditional love of a God who values me as important and worthwhile.

Its just that sometimes I am caught in that warped pattern of thinking, too preoccupied with "life", to see what I have been missing.

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Week two of mindfulness comes from the weekly Picture Inspiration theme: motif. A motif is a distinctive and reoccurring form as in a design, as in a painting, or on wallpaper.

When I found this wall of happy faces over the weekend I was delighted to find a motif that spoke to me on many levels. It captured the basic idea of a motif (the reoccurring happy faces) but it also encapsulated a mental motif, a pattern of thinking that I know I am not alone in struggling with--this truth that happiness is something we often miss because we believe it is to be obtained through things or circumstances. Our repetitive mental motif (which breeds debilitating emotions) needs some serious divine intervention, and some personal effort, in choosing to renew our way of thinking if we are ever to experience the contentedness for which we long. I wanted to photograph someone walking by this wall o'happiness to illustrate this struggle.

rhythm

the sound of my steps as I walk my favorite two-mile loop
the beat to my favorite song 
the click of a metronome as I play the piano
the sway of our bodies as we dance with our kids
the flash of the blinker light on the car in front of me
the bounce of a basketball in the courts across the street
the staccato of a wood pecker off in the distance
the yip yip yip yip of the tiny neighbor's dog left outside
the ritual Sunday ride to church
the rise and fall of the tide
the cycles of sleep and wakefulness
the pulse of my heart after a long walk
the strum of my husband playing his guitar 
the beep of the microwave as it ends it's task...beep, beep, beep, beep
the routine of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, breakfast, lunch, and dinner
the rising and setting of the sun
the clickity-clack of the train over the tracks as I wait at the crossing gate
the familiar pattern of California spring growth: the poppies, the daffodils, then the tulips...
the turn of the seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall...winter, spring, summer, fall...
the second hand of the clock quietly counting time
the sound of the hammer in the construction zone behind my house
the drip of my leaky kitchen facet, drip drip drip, until I wiggle it to stop
the days of the week rolling by...1,2,3,4,5,6,7...fifty-two times a year
the feel of my son's chest rising and falling under my hand as I check on him before I head to bed
the ritualistic morning kisses as everyone heads off to work and school
the sound of my husband's snore, until I nudge him to roll over
the spin of the earth in twenty four hours
the yearly circle of the earth around the sun


the weekly ritual of laundry: sort, wash, dry, fold, sort, repeat


Rhythm. My **assignment this past week was to capture this word. Definition: A harmonious sequence of pattern of masses alternating with voids, of light alternating with shade, of alternating colors, etc.. (There were many ways we could interpret it but we were to capture some piece of the definition.)


I sat with it for days and let it ride with me in my car, soak in to my skin during a hot shower, rest with me on my pillow as I drifted off to sleep. Funny how once you get an idea in your head you begin to see it everywhere. 


One day I was folding laundry and I stepped outside of myself to watch from a distance. There I was in the quiet of the morning, sitting upstairs in the hallway outside of the laundry room, folding and sorting the clean clothes, participating in a routinely rhythm of sorting and folding, sorting and folding. It is a basic task of life of which I have succumbed to the responsibility and one that I do not always enjoy, for it is never fully completed. And it falls under the category of "routine"--a word with which I have never been friends. 


And yet, and I know this sounds weird, as I sat there sorting and folding I saw a woman carrying her dirty linens to scrub them in the river, and another was hanging them to dry on a line strung outside her window. One woman was in the fluorescent light of a laundry mat inserting coins into a machine, and another was sitting in her hallway folding laundry in the quiet of the morning. This thought struck an oddly beautiful note in me: I was participating in a daily universal rhythm of the care and keeping of myself and my family. And one in which I had been participating for most of my life, once a week (sometimes more), year after year after year. 


I paused in wonder at how the universe has been pulsating in a wonderfully balanced rhythm for thousands of years, and how our bodies bare witness to the life giving rhythmic beat of our hearts. Day after day we rise to the beat of our own lives and then climb into bed, only to rise the next day to do it all over again. All of life rolls forward, beat after beat, after beat, after beat.


(Deep thought: So why should I be surprised to find disorder, imbalance, disease, and pain when the rhythms of life are disrupted? Laundry aside, how much of my life could find more health and balance if I simply instilled more rhythm into it?)


Anyway, in my little quiet laundry moment I wondered if I could make peace with my weekly chore of sort, wash, dry, fold, sort, repeat by simply surrendering to the rhythm of it?


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The photo above was the product of my new weekly attempt to practice mindfulness when I pick up my camera. I enrolled myself in an online photography course entitled Picture Inspiration. This week's prompt was to capture "rhythm". I thought of a million ways I could convey rhythm in nature but I wanted to see if I could capture it in everyday life, since I felt that the assignment had taken me in the personal direction of evaluating my own life's rhythm. I thought of a laundry room where the weekly rhythm of doing the laundry takes place. I ordered my stack of clean clothes in a dark/light/dark/light pattern to convey the sense of "alternating colors", which is a piece of a the rhythm definition, and ultimately represents the rhythm of daily life, doing laundry.


Geez. Listen to me. Who have I become? I sound like some artsy-fartsy person standing in my art gallery explaining the deep meaning of the sculpture I just made out of sticks of butter and bubble gum wrappers.   


Do I need to go lighten up?