This morning I realize that one of the ways I have limited myself was to buy into the belief that I needed to “earn money.” I realize that the most successful things financially in my life have been things I did “for fun” and ended up by serendipity being financially successful.
I can even start with my doing a PhD in physics — that started with my liking to tinker with things, like taking apart a flashlight over and over as a child, fascinated with how it worked. Then choosing to major in physics in college because I had so much fun doing the lab experiments and being invited to help teach the lab sessions while I was still an undergraduate. And we physics majors had to take a shop class — learning to use hand and power tools — how many girls got to do that back in the early 1960’s!!! — more fun.
Then I went to grad school and worked on bubble chamber experiments at big particle accelerators because of how much fun I had back in college when a professor took some of us physics majors to visit an accelerator and help with an experiment he was working on. The money for grad school came from stipends I got as a teaching assistant and then a research assistant. I enjoyed teaching the lab sessions for the undergraduate physics course, as I had done while my undergraduate years.
Then there is photography — I was given a simple brownie box camera when I was about 13.
Then I was given a good 35mm film camera when I was in college. A boyfriend in grad school got me started making black-and-white prints in a darkroom. I enjoyed wandering around making photos of whatever caught my eye — no particular “reason” for making those images. Photographing kept me out in nature during grad school, and student art sales gave me an outlet for my creations.
Then my time with Gia-fu Feng led me to illustrate with my photos our edition of the Chinese classic, Tao Te Ching.
And how is it that I found my Native American friends? By being drawn to their spiritual ceremonies that happened out in nature rather than in churches — sweat lodges, sunrise ceremonies and long silent walks. These took me to a more expanded state of being than what I had found while photographing nature.
There is more history I will write — but at this moment I want to look at “now”
I have a hard time with “work,” with “labor” — is that due in part from my “native” culture? with how I was born with no labor? I hesitate to speak of this, not wanting to be seen as lazy, not wanting to feel guilty for not being purposeful. But this difference comes to mind over and over. I am tired of trying to fit into a culture that is not my own, that of assuming work is virtuous. I much prefer the smile that comes to me when I let myself just “be,” when I sit back and take in this world I find myself in — for instance, how did there get to be chickadees in my world — ones I see close-up on the shelf feeder outside the window behind my living room couch?
And then there’s that deep blue in the sky — so luscious!
And I have noticed that often when I am in this state of just “being,” paradoxically, I find myself moved to “do” something — action that just emerges naturally, that is not forced.
Enough words for now — enjoy feeling whatever it is that these musings of mine “tickle” within your own being.