If God where a gardener
“In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: Music and gardens.”
Oliver Sacks
“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle…Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something.”
John Gardner
“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
“…Wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in their home, they first disciplined themselves…”
Confucius, The Great Digest
“Man jeetheh, jag jeeth. Master yourself, you’ll have conquered the world.”
Guru Nanak, Jap Ji Sahib, Sikh Prayer
You can fail at something you hate.
Jim Carrey said this in an interview once and it haunted me for years. His father was a funny man as well and wanted to pursue comedy, but was too scared to; he had a family to care for. He took the safe route and worked as an accountant in a office for many years despite hating it. Then the company laid him off without warning. No longer able to afford to make their house payments, their whole family ended up living in their car for a period of time.
He had taken the safe route and still failed.
It was after listening to this interview during my lunch break at a job that didn’t afford me growth or even enough money to live sustainably that I consciously decided that I would pursue art seriously. This was about 3 or 4 years ago.
If I was going to fail, it was going to be at something I loved.
Since then I have done my best to study as much as I can while working odd jobs to support myself.
It’s not easy to take care of aging parents, work, job hunt, and juggle my duties to my house-sitting clients and my managing duties at the market. Especially in a country that seems to think health care is a luxury. But I have persisted in my path towards a life more in tune with my values.
This year I have had the chance to sell my prints at The Redmond Saturday Market. It’s such a lovely community and I have received such a warm reception from vendors and customers. I’ve sold more prints than I ever thought I would.
I can’t wait to see what will happen next. I’m working on several projects I hope to be able to share soon.
I wish I had the courage to never have stopped making art. I have been drawing and writing stories since I was little, but was met with a barrage of questions I never had the answer to.
What will you do with an art degree? How will you make money? Is art essential? You should do something useful.
I started to doubt myself and my abilities and settled for more “practical jobs”.
I think I’ve made this much clear before in previous letters that humans are not a rational creature. We are a meaning making creature. Meaning is something you feel. No one dies by suicide because they are hungry, they do die when they are lonely. Loneliness is a symptom of meaninglessness and lack of purpose. I’ve said this before. We were not made for ourselves alone.
Art is what bridges that gap between us. It is the thing that makes loneliness dissapear.
I once made a portrait of a friend who passed away and it was so special to the family. I’ve seen pet portraits I’ve made bring people to tears. It helped them honor a friend. It helped them heal. It brought them joy. I can’t think of many things more powerful than that.
Art is a way to see the world. A way to slow down time. A way to remember and worship.
But the world worships money, forgetting that money was to be a servant, not a god.
When I spent a summer in India as a teenager, I stayed in my paternal grandmother’s house, the one my grandfather built. I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning as the sunlight was just starting to break, the peacocks were calling, and the morning prayers were starting at the temple, all in glorious harmony with each other.
After showering and getting dressed my grandma and I would walk down to the temple together along with anyone else who wanted to join. We would all sit together as the smell of food being prepped in the kitchen wafted down the street. Sikhs donate and collect ingredients and supplies for the temple and cook and eat together so that even someone who may not have food at home can still fill their and their children’s bellies at the communal kitchen for free.
No one has to start the day hungry if they do not wish it. And no one has to start it alone.
Some may see that as a hand out - I call it basic human decency.
Anyone who ate at that kitchen was giving back, in some way or another, what they could for taking what they needed. Humans are very reciprocal creatures. When someone does us a kindness, we want to repay it. (As is true when someone does us a disservice, we want to repay that as well. Isn’t that so?)
Grandma left the gate open so people could pop in and out for tea as they pleased during visiting hours.
There was no air conditioning and afternoons were blazing hot so we would hunker down on cots and wait out the sun. This was the quietest part of the day - even quieter than night. Books were good company in the afternoons. As were my sketchbooks and journals.
Then as the day started to cool, life would return to the village as people finished remaining tasks.
I would watch as my aunt helped my little cousins with homework and listen to my uncle recount his day on the farm.
The evening prayers would fade into the air as the last bit of sunlight would.
It feels like an odd declaration in an era like this, but I miss religion.
It has nothing to do with belief in a god or not.
It has to do with the belief that we have duties to each other and the earth from which we are a function of. I suppose it’s about responsibility. The responsibility to discipline oneself enough to be able to help others.
I liked having meditation built into my routine. It was steadying. As reassuring as a school bell. The prayers were accompanied with music so you were privy to two or more free orchestra sessions a day. There’s nothing like live music. It was healing. Even western societies will now freely laud the many neurological and physiological benefits of meditation. It fills you with gratitude and purpose for the day ahead.
There was hard work to do, but it didn’t destroy you. Maybe it even nourished you. Work on the farm felt so essential and real. Connected. I loved being around the plants and animals and family.
I understand we can’t all go back to an agrarian lifestyle, but I hope we can still imbed in ourselves the old spirit of tending to each other and the planet with a strong integrity. To live life as it were on purpose and not some unconcious instinct.
To recognize one’s own power and influence, negative or positive on the world, might be one of the hardest things to do.
In a culture that worships money, we expect to be treated like consumers, not active citizens. We expect to be sold on deals and conveniences. We expect saviors or tyrants that promise us ease and convenient answers to complex problems. We out source responsibilty in the name of specialization saying “that’s not my job”.
We forget what all of this convenience truly costs.
I think if more people learned to see the world as an artist, they would see how to simplify the complex in a meaningful way. Simplicity does not mean easy. There is nothing easy about art.
It means clarity.
It means a supreme wonder at the impossibility of being.
A desperate aching for all of the destruction.
A deep need to capture the beauty of what is and to share it.
A pull to create something better.
In India, people believe that God exists in us all. It’s the part of us that does service for those around us. It lives in symbiosis. It’s indistinguishable from the the creation.
