Letting Pleasure Lead
Day #33 of Hilma af Klint and the Imaginary Possible
I wanted to get from where I was to a place where I felt liberated and free.I wanted to do work that mattered to me and to others too.
I wanted someone to give me a map, to show me the way.
I spent years, actually a good part of my life trying to figure it out, plotting and planning, the career, the situation, the credentials, the job that would take me from here to a much better place.
But no matter how much information I gathered, how many self help books I studied, how many plans I made, it was never quite enough.
Plan B never materialized.
How do you imagine something you’ve never known that may not even exist.
How do you dream about what you can’t yet imagine?
One thing that painting with Hilma taught me, was that we make the map by moving in the direction of our desires. The path is not laid out. The signs, if they exist, are ones you don’t know how to read for a long time. No one else will tell you if you are getting closer or farther way.
Like drawing one line or shape at a time, it takes awhile for the larger picture to emerge.
There is no answer or map or guaranteed strategy, only the practice of listening to you heart and learning to trust yourself to move in the direction of what gives you pleasure.
Ambition is something we respect. Pleasure, the feeling of it, the activity of it, is seen as frivolous, not nearly as important as making your mark.
Pleasure, especially the pleasures that bring you into your body, connect you to your heart’s wisdom.
Pleasure is an internal guidance system which when you move towards it, sets your life into motion.
In painting with Hilma, I began a wild and strange journey.
I began to let pleasure lead.
