Art: A Sacred Portal to Living Well When You’re Not
From the moment we are born, we adapt to outside influences. These are not necessarily destructive forces, but they shape who we are. They come together differently in each of us and make us unique. When we’re young adults, we are captivated with life at its lusty, busy level. We teach ourselves to react in ways we think will enhance our chances of surviving and getting what we want from life. When we’re young, and let’s face it, even as adults, we often aren’t aware of how things like culture, religion, education, relationships, and events shape our view of ourselves and the choices we make. If we were, we would become frozen, given the myriad of circumstances surrounding each life and the endless possibilities that can change the trajectory of our lives. We would be overwhelmed with indecision and unable to take the necessary risks to survive. Our actions are influenced by data stored in the secret hard drive in our minds of if/then scenarios that sometimes result in faulty pattern analysis or coping strategies that fall short when something overwhelming or unexpected happens.
Any serious illness disrupts our lives and sometimes brings about profound changes in us. But an illness that takes up permanent residency in our stories, changes how we function, and has no cure, alters our biographical arcs. Our struggling bodies give us an unwelcome shove into discovering how to chart a new course without the prescribed roles we have created. We are faced with figuring out how to begin to live into our new circumstances because we can’t change the world around us or what’s happening in our bodies. Spoiler alert! I don’t think there is AN answer, but I think an awareness of our stories and how they influence us, along with a healthy dose of creativity, can point us to discovering new ways to live and understand our value without our defining roles. Read my blog post, What’s Your Story, to learn more about how our biographies influence our choices.
Art can be the sacred portal through which we enter as fragmented beings and emerge whole, neither denying nor focusing on single aspects of ourselves. Through art, we inch closer to being sure about what we know to be true while maintaining the uncertainty necessary for future growth. It brings us to a place where willpower and intellect aren’t enough. Exposure to and participation in the arts opens us to the wondering that must take place to invent new ways to live beyond our constructed selves. Artists help us realize that our fragility is also theirs, and our joy is theirs as well. This connection to the vulnerability in others and the recognition of the shared joy and pain of all humans gives us the courage to take risks and ask new questions. Art puts a magnifying glass on the pieces that make up the human experience and allows us to glimpse the essence of our being. If we fully engage in creative arts, time collapses, our attention shifts for a while, and our symptoms decrease. Our creativity flows freely when we are in the zone, and we can interrupt old response patterns that don’t work. We no longer need to compare and compete or strive for a particular life plan or outcome at that moment. The arts engage our senses and use our minds and bodies, even our broken ones, to reach our souls. Watch Why Medicine Needs Art by Jill Sonke, research director of the University of Florida’s Center for Arts in Medicine.
Writing helps me enter a place where, most of the time, my illness, my limitations, and my roles don’t define who I am. I recently published a book that tells the story of my ancestors and how they navigated the ever-changing world of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Louisiana. I took data from research and organized it in a way that helped me identify commonalities among people. While writing My Family, I recognized my ancestors' joys, heartaches, grief, disappointments, anxieties, hopes, and dreams in my own life, even though they lived centuries ago and encountered different situations. This resonance with people across time made me realize with greater clarity that each of us faces adversities that cause us to run to the edges of our resources. Their stories inspired me to head into the wind.
Experiment with different art forms by attending beginner classes, watching Internet videos, starting a journal, cooking new dishes, downloading a karaoke app and singing as loud as you can, playing air guitar or drumming on your desk to the beat of your favorite music, dancing or moving any way you can, coloring in an adult coloring book, taking photos of nature or interesting objects with your phone, arranging grocery store flowers in a vase - the list is endless. You don’t have to produce masterpieces or Grammy-winning performances. Just engage and see what happens!
Visit my resources page to discover more ways art helps us live well even when we’re not.
