Be Not Soul-Dampened

I’m extremely reluctant to give anyone advice about anything of late, but I can tell you a few things that are working for me, what’s getting me through these uncertain days.

Firstly, you know how I am with mantras. And there are a few lines that I just keep repeating in my head. Be Not Soul-Dampened! is one of them. We’re all trying our best, is another. One that I’ve borrowed from a friend is — today is going to be a great day!! (Two exclamation points minimum necessary). You would think that these seemingly cheesy throwaway lines might simply be cheese, but they go some way toward re-wiring your brain patterns. They send one off in the correct direction. Probably the other most useful thing that I do everyday is ask, how can I make today more fun? Luckily for me, my idea of fun is pretty easily attained. Often, this fun thing that I focus on as soon as I wake up is taking a photograph of something. Most Sunday mornings I’m challenging myself to get out of bed early and take a photo of a cool place in my own city, or someone in an interesting setting. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen some of my dorky side-projects. The thing about doing something strictly for fun is you don’t have to analyze why you’re doing it, if you can monetize it, or if it has enough layers of meaning. You don’t have to justify why you find something fun to any other being. If I find it fun to sprawl out on the grass and take photos of clouds and cherries and the flags in my backyard blowing in the wind, I’m allowed that. Enjoy what you enjoy. Another mantra.

We must hold onto whatever joy and delight we can right now. On Twitter, The Library Owl says it very well:

“genuinely joyful people are often not taken seriously, but there are few things harder or braver than hanging onto your delight and awe amid the flaming furnace of the world’s horrors. a truly joyful person has a soul made of steel.”

So if you are able to generate some joy, to kindle some delight, at this time, please know that you are a wee bit of a hero.

The other thing that keeps me interested right now is thinking about how our stories have shifted and changed and keep evolving. This is true for yourself and true for probably every single person you encounter. And isn’t that wildly interesting? It’s not always comfortable, it’s not always splendid. But it’s pretty much always interesting.

Think about this from Anne Bogart:

“We are telling stories all of the time. Our body tells a story. Our posture, our smile, our liveliness or fatigue, our stomach, our blank stare, our fitness, all speak, all tell a story. How we walk into a room tells a story. Our actions relate multiple stories. We invest our own energy into stories. Deprived of energy, stories die.

”It is natural to adopt other people’s stories to help create our identities and to fill in gaps in our experience or intelligence. This can be helpful up to a point but it is easy to get stuck in other people’s narrative structures. Stories become easily cemented and rendered inflexible, developing into assumptions upon which a life is lived. Without vigilance, stories become documented history and form, and their origins are forgotten. Rather than mechanically allowing other people’s stories to guide our lives, it is possible to get involved and narrate from a state of passionate participation.”

I repeat, get involved from a state of passionate participation!

Wow, hey?

How do you want to tell your story? In what ways do you want to be alive? What energy do you wish to bring into a room or a space, even if that space is an online space. What is your story now? Bogart also says that “all of our thoughts and actions become, in due course, public.” She uses the example of how the impact of even a telephone call conversation reverberates. “The conversation travels.” Perhaps it is overheard, or conveyed to another person, and so on. We have no idea how far a simple exchange will ripple out.

Bogart wrote, What’s the Story well before the pandemic, but for me it feels even more relevant. She quotes Erich Heller who says, “Be careful how you interpret the world; it’s like that.”

There are a lot of strands to the story, some we don’t even quite know about yet, or some that are just out of our reach or realm. But I remind myself that it’s up to me how I enter a room, enter the day. I want to be a good interpreter of the world. Aspirationally, and with the full knowledge that this will not always be possible and that I will often fail miserably, I want to participate in this story we are all currently in the thick of, from a place of good energy, delight, and with a soul aligned with joy.