Planting The Seed - Art = Compassion
We all need to know we are not alone. Our human experience is not the same as everyone else’s, but the feelings and emotions underpinning these experiences are the same.
A few years ago, I decided to start reading more books—not only more books but books I would not have thought to read.
We all have genres of books, media, or music that we are naturally drawn to, and it is easy to stay with what we like and what we know will deliver us a particular feeling or experience.
Until a few years ago, I only read fiction on the holidays, equaling two to three fiction books a year. The rest of the time, it was all non-fiction, either from a book in my hands or a book in my ears.
I am embarrassed to share that my main premise for reading only a small amount of fiction was, “Why bother reading made-up stories when real life is happening all around—all the time?”
Now I understand that one of the reasons to read fiction is precisely because real life is happening all around us—ALL THE TIME. Sometimes, we need to escape. We need to sink into the real or created story of others.
As a facilitator, I often witness what happens when people share their stories and experiences with others in a safe space.
We all need to know we are not alone. Our human experience is not the same as everyone else’s, but the feelings and emotions underpinning these experiences are the same. Reading any book of any genre can make us feel less alone.
Along with my narrow view of books worthy of reading, I felt the same about particular movie genres, and animation was not high on my list.
And yet….
Go and see Inside Out 2.
If you have yet to see the first movie, watch the first movie, and then watch the second. With every single person, you can.
I went on the opening night with Emrys, my husband, and our eighteen-year-old. It impacted all of us in the same way and different ways.
I am not someone who has experience of what it is to live with anxiety, so although I have people in my life who either constantly live with anxiety or have periods of paralysing anxiety, it has not, as of yet, been my lived experience.
I can listen and support, but I do not know what it feels like. Inside Out 2 gave me a visceral feeling of what it might feel like for some people to live with anxiety.
If you are of the same generation as me, it is likely that you did not grow up with language around mental health. I certainly didn't, and if we do not have language around something, it is harder to understand ourselves or others.
Any form of art that connects us to the expansive landscape of human emotions is a service to us all.
We are human because we feel.
If we want to be better leaders, parents, children, employees, friends, and partners, the wider our emotional vocabulary, the better—for you and for us. xxx
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The Harvest - Going back to the beginning - again.
Standing at the kitchen window at the farm the other morning, the mist was hanging above the valley, and my friend, the big and bold Kookaburra, was already there to say good morning.
He seems to be a very reflective fellow. He likes to sit on a particular branch of the grandfather Oak or the birch tree on the other side of the garden.
Earlier this year a dear friend in New York told me that a mourning dove had built a nest on her window sill. The dove had laid two eggs and was patiently sitting. Patiently waiting.
“She is a great meditation teacher”, my friend said.
This conversation with my friend, which happened six months ago, will not leave me.
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