Changes, Surrender, Art

My friend Ron put up a good post about how a story changes with time. I feel like that is happening with my book.  It has changed and changed again. It–there I go using an unclear pronoun. It, the meaning of the book has changed and so has how I feel about it.

There are some people you spend a year with and really know and then meet again a year later and feel strange around. I feel strange around Claire, Guy, Shane and the rest of the people in my book. It’s like a reunion that I missed out on some of the information everyone else knows.

But, I have been thinking about them from out of nowhere. I welcome them and want to see inside deeper into their lives and how their lives have changed. It makes sense. I am changing.

I’ve been trying to work with them over this past year, but I was trying to work with who they were before and not giving them space to grow, deepen or hate me. 

Alas, will I ever learn that when I’m slogging uphill, I’m trying to force something?

 whether it’s in writing, relationships, yoga, life…

Surrender is an interesting practice. I was so upset that Wise One wasn’t getting her sleep. (Days of being angry or sad and knowing I didn’t need to be. That it was silly to be so mad about it.)  I was rocking her on my lap in our blue La-z-Boy.  She was refusing to sleep. I kept rocking, closed my eyes, was crying silently and finally (I know, why does it take me so long?) thought , “Oh God, I can’t keep pushing against this. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know how, but I surrender.” I opened my eyes and she was asleep, in less than a minute. We change when we surrender and we allow that which is around us to flow into its true state. Her sleep is normalizing back into the routine she was in before. She is happier and wants to spend more time by herself creating or reading.

The feeling has to be there. In art, we must surrender for it to be art, authentic in its true state. And art is any part of our lives that we allow or recognize to be in its true essence, that we appreciate as it is and allow to flow.

And now, I will remind myself to be wary anytime I think I know something.

And send you fond blessings.

With appreciation,

Laurie Cosbey