Do What You Love, and Love What You Do

In my "Layers of Learning" post (October 9,) I shared that my year-end/year-beginning reflective time this year had not led to any major Aha! moments, but instead kept presenting lessons that I have already been working on for years, only in different forms.  Every time I would bump into a lesson and examine it, I would almost always see familiarity.  "Oh, that again!"  This week I'd like to explore the three big lessons that I will continue to focus on this year. 

"Do What You Love, and Love What You Do" may actually be two, but they seem to fit together so I am going to consider them as one. 

"Do What You Love" has haunted me for some time.  I love writing.  I love dancing.  Right after those two come cooking tasty and healthy food and watching movies.  I am actually much better about the cooking and watching movies than my core loves of writing and dancing.  Perhaps that is because I need to eat every day, and I want to eat healthfully.  In a lot of ways, I've let cooking become a survival activity rather than a passion.

The difference in how I approach what I love ties to the "Love What You Do" part of the lesson.  Over the weekend, I watched a movie (twice) about a chef who really was passionate about his cooking.  In the movie, we see him growing and harvesting his own vegetables and herbs and deriving great pleasure in "listening to his heart" as he cooked.  At one point, viewers see him mentoring an aspiring chef by blind-folding her so that she will learn to listen to her inner knowing about food.

Too often, my cooking has fallen into an auto-pilot activity rather than being something I approach with the passion of the movie chef.  It wasn't always so.  There was a time when I approached cooking as a dance, engaging with the food I was preparing with great joy.  I still enjoy going to the Farmers' Market around the corner on Saturday morning, but rarely do I stop and drink in the sights and smells and let my imagination run wild the way I used to do.  I recall a time when I would walk out on my deck with a bowl and grab hands-full of fresh herbs, which I'd use to make up recipes. 

It's been way too long since I had a relationship with the food I prepare.  I blame time, but when I am honest with myself, I know that it doesn't take appreciatively longer time to engage and really experience the love of what I am doing than it does to do the same activity mindlessly.  The difference isn't time.  The difference is consciousness and intention.   I bring the intention to be really awake to my passion for the activity, and then I am conscious of doing so.

What else is true is that when I bring that intention and consciousness to my efforts in the kitchen, my whole being changes.  I am physically relaxed.  I am spiritually engaged.  I am joyful. I am creative. My activities are easy, effortless, and enjoyable--in a "flow" state when I lose track of time and everything else.  When I consume the products of effortless labor, I truly en-joy them...I am in joy with what I eat.  Until I face the dirty pots and pans, all lines are blurred into a single oneness of being.  (Even clean-up is less onerous when I allow myself to flow to it.)

Although I watch a lot of movies, the same thing might be said of how I experience them any more.  More often than not, the movie comes at the end of a very long day, and watching a movie is a passive activity to keep my exhausted body awake until a respectable hour for an adult to go to sleep.  I don't really engage with the movie most of the time.

Saturday I joined in a ritual movie event with two friends who also love movies.  Every couple of months, the screenwriter in our trio picks two classic films for us to watch.  In the middle, we usually take a walk and cook/eat together.  I was conscious this time about how different it is when I participate in these conscious-viewing events than the passive consuming, which has become my norm.  As with cooking, I will bring more attention and intention to my passion for movies in the future.  I will not only do what I love, but I will consciously bring love to the movies I watch.

I hesitate to call the other two things that I love "activities." Each is at the core of my being.  I've had the conversation with people in the dance community before that there are "dancers," and there are "people who dance."  "People who dance" can take it or leave it.  They could as easily go bowling or play tennis if they were in a relationship with someone who enjoys those activities. 

"Dancers," by contrast, are one with dance. They could more easily give up breathing than dance.  Dancing almost instantly takes them into a "flow" state where the dimensions of time and space drop away.  I've had evenings when I had a good partner(s), good music, and a good floor, when the time for the "last waltz" was announced, and I felt as if I'd just arrived.  I had totally lost track of time.  Once I danced for seven hours straight, and it felt like a flash.

There are often moments of "other worldliness" to a single dance, too, when the partners will just look at each other at the end of the dance because they know something magical just happened. (This is not a romantic thing; it is a dance thing.  I really don't know how else to describe it.)

Similarly with writing: it is who I am. I carry a knot on the second finger of my right hand from writing since I could hold a pencil. When I sit and get in the flow, it just comes.  I lose track of time and bodily needs, often going hours without food, water, or elimination.  I just don't notice.  I wrote The Game Called Life in five days, one day writing 32 pages.  I really don't know how I did it.  As with the "other worldliness" of the magical dance, I always feel like I am one with some divine force within me when I write. 

There are excuses why I have not been writing and dancing much recently.  I could blame the long hours at work, but that is getting lame. I know that I've been unconsciously choosing work over my passions.  My colleagues with families leave work earlier to be with what they love, but until now, I've not made it my intention to put what I love first.  I have other excuses, too, but they all boil down to being conscious of my intentions and then acting on them to assure that I do what I love.

A third dimension of loving what I do and doing what I love looms for me.  It involves the actual work I do.  Organization development is a wide field.  Some parts of it I really love.  Others, not so much. Some parts of the profession that I used to really love have burned me out.  Call it compassion fatigue.  What used to flip my switches now sends me into a semi-fetal position at my desk.

When I had my own business, I made a conscious decision to turn away work that I didn't enjoy.  As an employee consultant, that is a luxury I no longer have.  I do what I am assigned to do. "We all have to do things we don't enjoy," I am told.  I have expressed my desires, but mostly they have been disregarded.  I need to either learn to love the "not-so-much" stuff and do it with love, or I need to find another way to earn a living that allows me to do what I love. Maybe both.

As you can see, the Universe has left me a lot of room to grow myself this year in "Do What You Love, and Love What You Do," and at its essence that lesson is to be intentional and then be conscious of how I live my life.  I should be "in love" all the time. That is how we are intended to be. At that point, I believe I've segued from spiritual lessons to life purpose. 

Friday I Skyped with a friend in Canada, and I said to him that this was going to be a year of intense personal growth.  He asked me how I knew.  "The lessons I am working on this year are at the very core of who I am," I said. 

While I am certain that I will pass through these lessons more times in what I expect to be a long life, I am confident that if I embrace them this year they will profoundly impact the rest of my life, bringing joy and resilience to my days.  I feel like if I can "get it" this time, I may be in a position to really do the transformational work with others that I am here to do.  While humbling, the prospect is exciting...and terrifying.

I recall the words of an executive that I coached 20 years ago.  They resonated such truth that they are always with me.  She said that she had become convinced that when we were on our uniquely defined, divine path that we would simultaneously feel unabated joy and sheer terror.  As I embrace this year's lessons, they foreshadow just such a spot in my life. 

Sinking into Passion

In remarks after the movie last night, "The Monuments Men" author Robert Edsel said that the day he had arrived at the National Archives to begin his research in the morning, he had become so absorbed in the fascinating material that he was shocked when someone tapped on his shoulder.  It was one of the archivists, saying to him that the Archives was about to close.  "On Thursday we close at 9 p.m.," she said to him. He hadn't moved from the table since his arrival.

"Wow!" I thought.  How cool to be so absorbed with something that he totally lost himself for a day.  I was envious.  Then, I almost laughed out loud when I thought that was exactly what happened each time I've written a book.  The realization was like sinking into a hot bubble bath, wrapping me with warmth and reverie.

This is another weekend that I have set aside to work on my new book.  When I finally got in the groove the last time, words did flow easily, and I worked for five or six hours each day before tiring.  But, it wasn't that intense flow when I lose track of everything, and like Edsel, I forget all biological needs. 

Today was my normal day off, and it has been almost a month since I had time to tend to basic housekeeping needs.  I cleaned, changed the bed, did laundry, paid bills, and even filed my taxes.  (There's money coming back! Yeah!)  Was I avoiding?  I didn't really think so.  I could hardly see my small desk, and I didn't think it would be conducive to writing to try to create amidst such clutter.  I reminded myself that when I've worked on a book before, the "nesting phase" has been an important, maybe even an essential step.  So, I've had mercy on myself, even if this is avoidance behavior.

Before I go to bed tonight, my desk will be cleared, and my work space will be clean. The laundry is already folded, and the ironing put away. I am imagining myself getting up, stretching, making coffee while the computer boots, and sitting down to work with my special Peruvian good luck scarf, wrapped on top of my pajamas.  (Thank you, Deb!) 

I have a good feeling about this.  By the time Monday evening arrives, I will have had the experience for which I had envied Edsel--sinking deeply into my passion and totally absorbed in writing.  I've been there before: there's a kind of drunkenness without alcohol as I reenter the normal world from a place that is moving much faster and with its own rhythm.  Perhaps a bit like Dorothy landing in Oz.  Actually, that's exactly what it is like: "Where am I?" I'll ask while the room will spin about me.

Sinking into passion...into timelessness...has only happened for me when I write and when I dance, but is the most delicious space into which I tread.  It is truly sacred space, and each time I go there I am truly grateful for the privilege.

Like Water for Chocolate And Such Things

Twenty years ago, "Like Water for Chocolate" was a popular movie about a young woman--Tita--who was a wonderful cook, and she had the magical ability to infuse whatever she was cooking with the feelings she had when she was preparing the food.  On days when she was sad, the sadness went into the food, and guests would cry when they ate.  When she was joyful, they felt the joy in what she had cooked.

I love to cook.  I had a lot of things to do on this afternoon of "winter mix"--snow and sleet.  I did almost none of them and cooked instead.  A friend, who has a wonderful Christmas party, has asked me to bring a cake.  I set about to test recipes to find one suitable for the occasion and for my seriously chocoholic friend. 

When I bake, I get lost in time.  I am so connected to what I am doing that everything else drops away.  The technical term for what happens is the "flow" state.  Those who study such things say that a person in the flow state has developed enough competence that they don't really have to think about what they are doing.  My term for it is passion: a deep connection between gift and a love of what I am doing. I think that is probably what happened to Tita, and why her feelings became part of what she cooked. 

Being in the flow state is a gift, almost an out-of-body experience. I feel it most of the time when I write or dance with a great partner, as well as when I cook. I've even felt it when I was speaking. To use one's passions and gifts in this way is a responsibility. Surrender totally to a gift and passion transforms one to a truly heaven on earth.  Over the last few months, writing this blog has transformed me in the same way, and I am keenly aware how critical being in flow is for my happiness and sense of purpose.

I hope that those, who partake of the fruits of my labor at my friend's party, will feel my passion in each bite.  Sharing with them is my gift to her, them, and me.