Love

When I was young, love was all about the way people made me feel. Making sure I made people happy, is how I loved others. I learned over time that love isn’t some strange tingly feeling. It’s your actions.

Let’s start with yourself. Loving yourself requires a significant amount of action.

What is not loving yourself? Things that make you unhealthy physically, mentally, and spiritually. Toxic foods, toxic thoughts, and toxics belief systems are not healthy.

Taking action to mind yourself is loving yourself. That’s it.

Once you can manage that, you add another human in your life and partner on minding yourselves together.

“I’m just a big believer in ‘you must love yourself before you can love anybody else’ and I think for me that breeds the most inspired relationships.”

Scarlett Johansson

Turn on the Light

While washing the dishes today, I was straining to see if the dishes were clean. Finally after squinting through a couple rinses my daughter came in the kitchen to make herself a snack while telling me about her day. When I looked at her to listen to what she had to say, that’s when I realized the light wasn’t on over the sink. Once my daughter turned on the light, I could see everything more clearly.

How can we look at life with this silliness?

Sometimes we’re straining and struggling to see in an environment where the fix is something as simple as flipping a switch. First let’s note how it would have been a waste of energy to blame my own poor vision. So often we jump to attacking ourselves rather than the environment we’re in.

In this situation, taking my attention away from the task at hand is what ignited my realization. It wasn’t just some annoying distraction, it was my daughter who is a priority over the dishes. I want to hear what she has to say. So it was easy for me to disregard that task for a moment. So let’s think about this. It was a combination of my priorities and my daughter simply being herself that prompted me to realize my problem. She wasn’t there to solve the problem. I didn’t ask her how to solve the problem, the answer came to me naturally.

Maybe the way to realization is as simple as maintaining your values and priorates while inviting loved ones to just be themselves in your presence.

It might not solve everything but at least you’ll have someone there to listen to.

Full Cup

Today I had some much needed alone time. Phew, time goes by too quick in between my times of solitude.

I felt like a brand new woman by the time I got home. I felt peace. I felt like I was where I needed to be in life. All I could think was that I wanted to sit in this peace for as long as I could. On the flip side, while I was in my solitude, I could only think of how important it was to me that my peace pours over into all the cups around me. I’m excited to have something to give. As human, we can get so depleted that our cup runs empty and we have barely enough left to take care of our loved one’s basic needs. Our own needs easily go unmet because of fatigue and limited time or resources. But I want to make sure I’m in a space where people have permission to feel at ease. I want to make sure my cup is full, so when the opportunity arises, I can fill someone else’s. I want to engage with others who have full cups and are also ready to overflow into other’s lives. I want to have a tribe who are ready to overflow into my cup when mine gets low. Or even better, they remind me to fill my own cup like giving myself solitude, silence, meditation, and taking the time to enjoy the healthy foods I love.

Goodness this post reminds me how important my circle is.

How do you fill your cup?

Free Should the Scholar Be

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be,—free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom, “without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution.”

The American Scholar lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#THE_AMERICAN_SCHOLAR

When I do projects I usually like to divide them up into different areas of study. I’d like to look at creative freedom from a few different perspectives; Psycho-social, Economical, spiritual, academic, and philosophical.

It should be fun to see which area piques my interest most and of course, I’m interested in what area of study you all find most interest in as well. Research starts out big and then I gotta slowly chop away at it.

Let’s see where creative freedom takes us.

Mama Your Mama

Sunday Rest Day

It was a church, dishes, laundry, and lay around type of day for me. It was nice.

I spent a lot of time on my phone in my room alone. It was nice.

I’ve been thinking about freedom but also I’ve been thinking about what an honor it would have been to raise my mama and give her a beautiful childhood. Do you ever wanna mama your mama better than she was mama’d with no disrespect to your gramma? Most people don’t want to see their mother in pain. I surely don’t and if I could I wouldn’t think twice about giving my mama a better life.

We Practice Freedom

“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”

-William Faulkner

https://www.success.com/?p=29495 via @successmagazine

The Three Freedoms are your choice.

You can choose to grow.

You can choose to be heard.

You can choose to listen.

Not sure what the Three Freedoms are? Check out the links below.

Freedom to Grow
Freedom to Be Heard
Freedom to Listen

Creative Freedom and Purpose

Does your creative freedom have a purpose? What’s the focus of Three Freedoms?

If creative freedom is to obtain its fullest growth, its most complete development, it must have a great and worthy purpose. It must not be merely freedom for freedom’s sake.

Thomson, Charles A. “Creative Freedom and the World Crisis.” Music Educators Journal, vol. 28, no. 6, 1942, pp. 11–13. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3385929. Accessed 27 May 2022.

Charles A. Thomson believes creative freedom should a have purpose. Creative freedom in this sense, is based on the four freedoms the FDR spoke about in his speech. Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

 Culture is a part of life; cultural relations are a part of the whole complex of international relations. They must contribute, along with efforts in the political and economic field, toward building a world where the four freedoms flourish and where creative mind and spirit may be assured its right to live and serve.

He’s also speaking on gathering creative minds to bring global healing during world war two. His plan is to unite the global community through the arts.

An international order which will satisfy our hopes of peace is posited not only on political and economic cooperation, but also upon steps toward a greater cultural unity of mankind which may underlie the infinite variety of free individual expressions.

Thomson, Charles A. “Creative Freedom and the World Crisis.” Music Educators Journal, vol. 28, no. 6, 1942, pp. 11–13. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3385929. Accessed 27 May 2022.

When I speak on creative freedom, I focus on the freedom inside ourselves that can’t be hindered by external limitations. Or some may call it, freedom of the mind. I do strongly believe in the four freedoms being basic human rights and that they should be accessible to all humans. I believe art can find its fullest growth when a human has their basic needs met. Not only do I think art reaches its fullest growth when basic needs are met, but I think humans in general reach their fullest growth when their basic needs are met. When I write about the three freedoms my intention is that these practices are accessible whether someone has these external freedoms or not. When we write as conscious writers using the three freedom, even our art for arts sake has a purpose because we write with the intention of knowing the deepest parts of ourselves.

Before I wrap this up, I want to address one more aspect of the external freedom. There are places in the world where media is controlled and people are jailed for speaking the truth, speaking up for the innocent. They are hindered from using their freedom the be heard. But to give hope to our free minds, I’d like to end with what I stumbled across.

The Uncensored Library

Here’s a little bit about it

In other countries websites, social media and blogs are controlled by oppressive leaders. Young people, in particular, are forced to grow up in systems where their opinion is heavily manipulated by governmental disinformation campaigns.

But even where almost all media is blocked or controlled, the world’s most successful computer game is still accessible. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) uses this loophole to bypass internet censorship to bring back the truth – within Minecraft. #truthfindsaway

We should always be looking for ways to give voice to the voiceless.

So to sum it all up, external freedoms absolutely aid in our fullest growth as human beings. I think every human should have their basic needs met. The Three Freedoms that lead to creative freedom is focused on freedom of the mind. It’s focused on finding freedom regardless of your external limitations.

A Home for Creativity

“…; in what kind of social climate, a cultural milieu can human creativity be developed optimally?

Conditions of Freedom to Encourage Creativity

If one were to ask the question, what kind of nature? one might answer that it is and can be found in a free universe. To continue this questioning; what kind of human nature? The free man. What of society? The free society. What kind of consciousness? The free mind. What kind of education? The freedom to grow. What kind of philosophy? The freedom to create.”

PHILLIPS, GENE D. “Freedom through Creativity.” Educational Horizons, vol. 39, no. 4, 1961, pp. 121–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42923412. Accessed 26 May 2022.

If we’re going to nurture our creative freedom as writers, this is the home in which we must nurture our creativity. Most of us are privileged to have access to these freedoms but not all of us are. One gifts that comes with creativity is giving a voice to the voiceless.

https://jayne.press/2022/05/24/freedom-to-listen/