I’m starting a new tradition. Every Tuesday I intend to celebrate beauty in some form. Beauty Tuesdays! I’m diggin’ it. Hope you do too.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Danielle Laporte’s wonderful Desire Map program. I’ve settled on five core desired feelings for myself:
Freedom. Alignment. Conviviality. Evolution. Delight.
(Yes, they spell “faced.” I don’t know what the significance of that is, if any, but it makes it easier for me to remember them.)
I’ve also started a Pinterest board for each, with an eye to assembling a set of visual cues that will help me tap into those feelings whenever I need to. If you’re Desire Mapping, consider doing the same. They are works in progress, but already they are inspiring me with their wordless dimensionality. (This, from someone who loooooves words so much that I sometimes think I studied classical voice just so that I could roll those beautiful lyrics around in my mouth and savour them as they deserved.)
I chose this William Blake painting for my “I Desire: Freedom” board, because I love and admire Blake’s wild individuality, his artistry and his eccentricity. He was a wild man mystic who lived and worked in a very buttoned-down world. And I love his image of Los entering the grave – Los being Blake’s personification in art, and he appears to be carrying the sun itself as he embarks on a journey into the darkness. One of the aspects of freedom that is meaningful to me is the ability to set one’s own path and carry one’s own light to guide that path; Blake has embodied that here with typical vigour and freshness.
I’ll close with a few wonderful lines from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which is required reading for anyone trying to live a “yes, and” life.
Every thing possible to be believ’d is an image of truth.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
Exuberance is Beauty.
So this is today’s moment of beauty, for me: William Blake, freedom, Pinterest, desire mapping: All beautiful. I’d love to hear yours.