Where Are All the Imps & Mischievous Ones?

Being The Pink Dog of Happiness

I have something serious to talk to you about. It's been up on my radar for a bit.  Yesterday I began a conversation with myself about it and then I continued the conversation today with my daughter.  I realized it's a seldom discussed subject and perhaps we are all really starved for it. Before you peek at the next sentence, can you guess what it is?  If this were a card I'd have a little bit of paper covering the word but I can't do that here. Hopefully your crafty eyes have not darted ahead and you have filled in your own special word about what you think we all need more of in our lives and are not really getting.

I've been thinking about fun. Fun and lightness, lightheartedness, and my personal favourites foolishness, perhaps even impishness.  Where are the imps and mischievous ones these days?  It seems to me what our culture often sells us as fun is merely escapism and indulgence. Not to say that a movie or a novel, a dish of ice cream or a new toy can't be fun.  But at the end of the day how does it make you feel, that's the question I've been asking myself.  Do I feel nourished and restored or do I just need more? Do I feel joyful and revived or a little dirty?  Am I  on the prowl for something else? Or do I feel a little used and empty after that last new sweater or the eggnog latte?  Those are the the little elf questions that have been popping up and asking me to look at the details that make up my life.

An ocean of fun at Tofino, BC

Our culture is so busy convincing us of all the things we need to have and do to have fun, messing with our heads and hearts in sly marketing kinds of ways.  Just today as I waited to watch a Ustream teaching, a kindle advert told me that if I liked to read, I'd want the new kindle. It showed me happy pictures of young women with cats on their laps, cozy sleeping partners nestled beside them.  Surely my life would be more fun with a kindle?  And if I didn't buy a new kindle was the implication, I didn't like to read? Fun it seems has been hijacked, kidnapped, gagged and tied by the advertising industry, made into a thing, a lifestyle.  They have sucked all the life out of fun and put a price tag on it (whoops, that little rant was no fun was it?) Note to self, the truth is not always fun. Back to fun.  Are we having any yet?

When I took the awakening joy course, James Baraz asked people to do things that were fun for them.  Hmmm, a lot of us had to stop and think about that.  How do I have fun?  What do I regard as fun? Do you have some fun everyday?  I think often I am so busy getting done what needs to be taken care of, that I forget about fun.  I often choose work.  I like to cross those things off my to do list and fun isn't on it.  I have even watched myself doing things that I think should be fun and realized for whatever reason, that I'm not really having fun, I'm not fully engaged.  I'm half there, watching myself, watching others.  I might be noticing petty annoyances (it's cold out) or thinking about the next thing I have to do.

Fun Spots Tofino BC

I once heard a yoga teacher make an interesting comment.  She said something like, "I pretty much resist everything, except lying on the couch drinking a latte."  And I could identify with that!  I could see how I look forward to things until it's time to do them and then by some strange twist of mind, I'd rather stay home or do something else.  I read some research a while ago that made me realize I'm not alone.  People expressed the most happiness when "planning a vacation".  Not actually taking the vacation, but planning it was the fun part.  Hmmm.


So I realized a couple of things.  Culturally fun isn't valued for adults.  And many of us don't really know what is truly fun for us, what feeds us and nourishes us.  I'm not talking about fun substitutes, you know the tofurkey of fun, nope I'm talking about the meaty, luscious, drippy stuff that makes us smile from the inside out, leaves us feeling full and satisfied, corners of the mouth turned upwards.  And to find that thing we have to be like the Sherlock Holmes of fun, snooping around for signs, just the smallest ones, for those mid afternoon shafts of sunlight across the floor, the handful of paint chips we surreptitiously collected at the hardware store for no reason at all other that we like those colours.

A little Buddha 6"x6"

The more I explored the idea of fun, the more I realized that like so many things, it was an attitude of mind, something that comes from the inside and radiates out, not the other way around.  If you spend time with children, you probably know about fun.  They don't need much, a couple of fingers to turn into a spider, a cardboard box that becomes a house.  Fun is everywhere if you know "how" to find it.

You know how people pick words that they want to focus on for the next year, important words, weighty, thoughtful words like silence and love.  I've never been very successful with that. My words usually crinkle up and dry out by the first week of January.  Some years I find them all mouldy and sour under the couch.  But maybe FUN could be my word for 2014.  Maybe at the end of 2014 if I explored fun with enough gusto I'll have a great big freeway of neural pathways with on and off ramps that flash the word "fun" in big neon letters.  Who knows, but it could be fun.  I'll keep you posted.  And if you really want to have a little fun, watch this bonus video below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCyw3prIWhc

Having A Light Touch

I'm cheating again!  This picture is part of yesterday's piece.  These two leaves are image transfers of the original Bodhi leaf  that my friend got from India.  I am taking pleasure lately, in capturing portions of larger paintings and of course it makes up for the fact that nothing new came out of the easy bake oven in the studio today.  (Remember those little ovens and those little pans and cute little boxes of cake mix, ah, such fun!) 

It was a gorgeous Spring day (with cloud promised for later in the week) so a walk in the country was in order.  Then a little art marketing.  I've heard it said that artists spend as much time working the business end as they do painting.  Today I wrote a wee bio (which I detest doing).  Somehow they feel pretentious to me (and if you haven't noticed I can have a hard time being serious)  I always remember Miss Piggy's famous line, "who, Moi, pretentious?"  Anyway the Fairfield Artists Studio Tour (FAST) kindly put late ol' me onto their website.  So as things have unfolded I will open my doors and participate in that event.  So if you are in Victoria, mark your calendar for April 25th-26th and drop by and say hello.

It's interesting to me how things go.  My Zen teacher always says, "a no is as good as a yes."  And for me this is becoming a real guide in how to approach things.  It came up a few times as I sat in meditation and in conversations that it might be good to do some brick and mortar marketing things.  So even though the timing was a bit off, I followed the studio tour lead.  If things don't work out I will just let that one go, I thought to myself.  But as I went along doors opened and though it seems a bit of a rush everything points to it being a good thing to do.  The next part of it to remember is not let the cranky, perfectionist part of me get in there and make me crazy!  The Dharma will be in approaching it all (at least that will be the plan) with a light touch, just doing, not fretting (which worked well for my last minute Christmas Open House).

It is so easy to wind yourself up like a little spring bound propeller, thinking of all the things that need to be done.  But in truth it is just a matter of using your energy wisely, not wasting it on fretting (don't I know that one well!).  So this evening I will fill out the application for the "Make It" show in Vancouver and remember that a lot of the work I do for the studio tour will transfer right over to that event.  And again if it works out, it will be a fun experiment, a test of the craft show market. 

It is all good Dharma, remembering to keep balanced and focused and just do what needs to be done.  And there in lies the work of the heart which is there in everything we do when we are willing to look.  My aim will be to keep my intention in mind as time goes on, to have fun, enjoy the process, to practice touching lightly and letting go.  And sometimes that's easy to do when things are going well but how about when you're dragging your tubs of stuff to a venue in the pouring rain, or the hot water tank bursts before guests arrive, or you wake up with a scratchy throat.  How graceful are we then?  It is easy to be nice when people are nice to you, but a real test of the metal when they hiss and snarl.  Then what?  Do we sharpen our own claws?

So those are some of my thoughts as today.  Not to let that mind get racing, not to get so immersed in what I'm doing or have my eyes set so far down the road that I  hardly notice the lovely souls standing in front of me, not to  have my mouth so firmly fixed with grim, work ethic determination, that I forget to have fun.  And oh yes, no claw sharpening!