I grew up in a home where “to use” meant “to waste.”
Even just a few years ago, my mother came to my home and noticed with horror that I had been burning a candle she had given me.
“Yes,” I said, “I’ve really been enjoying it. Thank you.”
The idea that “to use” means “to waste” played a very big role in my creative life as a child. Art supplies cost a lot, so to get a gift of special paper, or new colored pencils meant that anyone seeking to “use” these dear gifts must pay a heavy psychological toll. It took a certain level of bravery, to dive in.
Because the awareness of the high cost of these items was impressed upon me from a very young age, when it came time to use these precious treasures, I always felt like my creation had to be really special. With that pressure always looming, I often opted not to use the colored pencils at all, and to leave the precious paper in its box. Instead I would wander out, into the fields and woods, where nothing had an obvious price tag. And so the precious paper and pencils would sit, expensively, unused and lonely, on the shelf. It seemed easier to bear the guilt of not using them, than the guilt of using them.
The cost is very high, for such precious things.
It horrifies my mother to this day that I let my daughter put stickers all over a plain white piece of paper. Sometimes my daughter uses Every. Single. Sticker.
And something inside of me goes, “Yeeeeeaaaaah!” “Woohoo!” And leaps with joy, like a deer in the spring forest.
And I defend my daughter, with the words I did not possess in time to shield my own childhood. To live means to live in joy. To use the gifts we are given means to live in joy. “To use,” with gratitude, means to live in joy.
I defend my daughter with love. With love for the grandmother who grew up in such scarcity, such fear. With love for the mother who after many years found her own way back to the heart of the creative life. With love for the daughter and her joyful squeals. Because as each sticker gets “used,” (!) as each color bathes the page, as each page fills with the light of imagination – this joyful “using” gives back to each generation the food that they were starving for, the food that nourishes the soul.
There is a word in French: la nourriture. This means nourishment, food, and, importantly: that which supports the life of an organism.
I give thanks today for all things that nourish the soul, la nourriture that supports the life of an organism.
And I give thanks to all creation for such precious beauty, such joy.
I give thanks for the leaping creative force within
that will not be stilled and can only be at times diverted.
For everything that finds its way home at last. For that
within all of us
that can never be destroyed.
For the life force that endures.
I heard a prayer, from one of my favorite teachers the other day, Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It goes something like this:
May I be a radical.
May I have the courage to stand
In the place of my own knowing
To speak
From the calling of my own heart.
May we all have this courage, today and every day. The power to recognize la nourriture when we see it, and to seek it out, to take it down off the shelf, and make grateful use of it to live, joyfully, every day.
Namaste,
Erin
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