October 28, 2014 – On the way to hallelujah

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Walking through our neighborhood for the past 13 years with our black Labradors, I’ve gotten to know many of our neighbors – especially the other doggy people.  It’s lovely how our pups connect us. 

The other morning, as Bo and I were bounding back down Marinda Dr to our street, we saw a neighbor out in his driveway.  He’s a tall, slender guy with a playful humor who loves Labs – we’ve heard his stories about his Labs growing up – the one who played catch with herself on their sloped driveway, and the one whose tail was broken when his brothers and he used him as a tugboat in the lake! Yikes!  He called us over and said “hey, I’m so sorry about the other day –  I had grandkids around and lots going on and I couldn’t really say hi.”  His apology was so heart-felt – as if he’d been thinking about it and was glad to repair things with me.  I had a only a wisp of a memory of the time he was talking about – but without any sense of any slight on his part.  I had no idea what he was apologizing for!

His apology left me with a feeling of appreciation for his concern for Bo and me – he really cares to give us his time of day.   And it had me recall so many times I’d felt badly because of things a voice inside told me I’d done to wrong others. One time was this past summer.  I twisted myself up in the terrible feeling that my choice of words in an email to a friend had been insensitive.  When I didn’t hear back from her, I was convinced that was why.  I wasn’t able to release myself until I heard from her that she hadn’t given it a second thought. She hadn’t gotten back to me right  away because she was busy!

As much as I find this feeling incredibly uncomfortable, I have come to honor this part of our inner critic.  We are beings who need to belong within our circles of humans in order to survive, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually.  If we aren’t checking ourselves at all, we can erode the natural instinct in others to care for us.  I lived with someone who never said “I’m sorry” in fourteen years.  I am not with him anymore for good reason!  This capacity carries with it a kind of sweetness which holds us together.

Of course our inner critics can go too far. There is so much written and spoken about dealing with our inner critics for a good reason.  Being too hard on ourselves is crippling.  That said, I have this penchant for looking for the light in the dark – there is good reason healthy people have a functioning critic.

It certainly seems to be well-installed for the art-making process!  I’ve not met anyone who has worked their way out of it.  I see it in myself and, in varying degrees, in every painter who joins our groups or comes to my workshops.  There are a few who paint for the pure joy of it, where it seems their critic is not at play as much. Even these people have doubts about their work at times.

I’ve come to see the critical voice not as something that we overcome in order to live the lives we yearn for, but rather to work with and around.  In the creative process, it often goes by the name “resistance.” In physical exercise, we are strengthened by resistance – our muscles grow if we ask them to lift more weight.  It seems it functions similarly when we create.  I cannot imagine how I could have painted “Hallelujah” until I’d grown my capacities by painting and painting, working around the voice that told me I couldn’t paint that big and bold.

Then there’s the outer critic!  I listened to an interesting interview of Tara Sophia Mohr in which she says that feedback is 100% about the giver of it and not about our work. Huh.  She says she now writes for herself and considers feedback as information about her audience.  The problem is that many of our creator muscles have been weakened or even paralized by negative feedback/criticism.  She says we look for praise in places where we doubt ourselves and/or in line with what we want to be true about us. Of course!  Any form of genuine expression is inherently vulnerable – making it risky, especially at first. This makes it incredibly important to have a safe environment in which to create. If the desire to create is strong enough, it will overcome the voices of resistance.  But we can set it up to help it along.  My experience is that safety allows us to risk and praise is amazingly encouraging, fueling the desire to continue to create.

At our best, we are relational beings who need each other to feed and support our efforts – our lives.  I love the idea that we can develop the capacity to see feedback as all about “them,” watching the parts in us that respond to it – in all the various ways they do – revealing ourselves to us.  After all, we don’t choose the art we make, it chooses us, and we paint/write/create with the skill level we have in this moment. If we could do better, we would!   It follows then, that there’s nothing “wrong” with anything we create. Feedback is just information and the invitation to respond to that information.  For me that’s a formula for creative freedom. Hallelujah!