expectations – Kay Foley

Posted on April 22, 2022August 19, 2022 by Kay Foley — 1 Comment

My Mother the Painter

My mother was possibly 80 when she took up painting. She was living in a pleasant mobile home park for people 55 and older, in Sonoma CA. She had a very nice life there. She walked two or three miles a day, did line dancing, played cards in the clubhouse, and lounged by the pool, complete with palm trees. And she took a painting class.

I have no idea how the class was taught. I only know that she apparently judged most, if not all, of her paintings good enough to frame and hang on her walls. They were all over her place! You have to admire that. Most beginning painters, myself included, judge our paintings and ourselves as not good enough. Not my mother! She wasn’t boastful about her painting at all and she was pretty quiet about it, but she clearly felt proud of what she made. Good for her! So good.

I wonder what made it so easy for her. It was likely just a pastime for her, not a passion, and she held no expectations for her painting or for herself as an artist. She just enjoyed doing it. So there we have it, again. Those pesky expectations. They change everything.

My painting teacher pronounces expectation as the killer of joy. When you’re thinking about the outcome, you’re not in the moment. When you’re not in the moment, you’re not enjoying what you’re doing. I certainly have found this to be true. When I do a thing and just enjoy the doing of it, I’m able to flat out love it. I know this. There is great freedom in that.

But so often, we give away that freedom and that joy in pursuit of an outcome. How often we get in our own way! It is just so hard to turn off the judging brain. My mother did it. I can do it sometimes and when I do, oh boy, it’s fun.

“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.” ― Stephen W. Hawking

“It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.” ― Albert Camus

“The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

Posted on March 28, 2022August 19, 2022 by Kay Foley — Leave a comment

Vernal Equinox

I love that word, “vernal,” which literally means “of or relating to spring.” And equinox, too–equal night–when the sun sits directly above the equator, causing exactly equal hours of day and night in that part of the globe. We in the Northern hemisphere don’t exactly have that but we call March 20 the Vernal Equinox, anyway.

Anticipation of Spring is a wonderful thing as we plod along through the vagaries of winter weather. It is lovely to daydream about what might be stirring underground and within the branches of trees and shrubs. Tiny little bits of life busily organizing themselves to push forth into the warm sunshine. What might it be like deep inside those dark places?

Now it is all beginning. Ahh. The treasure hunt for wildflowers, buds, blooms, color, baby and migrating birds, and delicate greens is on. The courtship of blue and green has begun in nature’s ballroom of sunshine and raindrops. All manner of creatures are stirring, too, in the mud, dreaming of their lives above ground beginning once more. And already I’ve heard the peepers!

I always feel that living where there are four seasons offers the gift of anticipation. We know Spring will come. It’s a given. We don’t ruin it with expectation, as we do often ruin things in life. You can put as much pressure, hope and desire on Spring as you want and it won’t be chased away or ruined. It won’t fail us. It is infallibly itself and will definitely arrive, no matter what we ask of it. And we can rest in the knowing that it will be beautiful.

My paintings, my pickleball skill, my meditation practice might very well be adversely affected by my expectations, taking me out of the moment and stealing my joy in the doing. But Spring exacts no such price. I can daydream, hope, imagine and picture it with great anticipation, and what does it do? It comes and does what it does and it loves everything to pieces, no matter what. And for that I am very grateful.

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

“(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)”
— e.e. cummings, Collected Poems

“always
it’s
Spring)and everyone’s
in love and flowers pick themselves”
― e.e. cummings, Collected Poems

“Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.” ― John Muir, The Wilderness World of John Muir

Thanks for listening,
Kay

Posted on November 8, 2021 by Kay Foley — Leave a comment

Direction

A curious thing happened the other day. Where I live, we have many beautiful wooded parks and wild areas. The Gans Creek Wild Area is 320 acres and has lots of different trails and trailheads to explore. I love going there. In the fall there are yellow maples galore, and a couple of groves of them that are just magical. I have two favorite loops that I have followed many times, starting at Shooting Star trailhead.

The other day I went out with a couple of friends, one of whom loves starting from the Wagon Wheel trailhead. I had never been able to find a loop from there, and usually after having walked through the Yellow Forest to the creek I’ve turned back. Well. She was going to lead the two of us on a nice 3+ mile loop from there.

It was a beautiful brisk but sunny fall day. We took provisions, with the plan of picnicking on a particular bluff. Everything past the creek looked new and lovely to me although at the bluff I did notice that a blue ball cedar was perched on the right, just as on the bluff I had visited a few days before. I wondered if there might be blue ball cedars at all of the bluffs at Gans Creek?

Our fearless leader and that blue ball cedar on the bluff

We had a lovely pause there and then went on. I was telling about routes I often take and about this other bluff. My friend said she didn’t know of that one. Then she pointed to a right fork in the trail and said, “The Boy Scout camp is that way.” “It is??” I asked, perplexed. How could it be? As we walked, I thought this area looked similar to the loop I usually took. And then suddenly, we went around a bend and I knew exactly where we were! We were on my loop from Shooting Star! How could that be? We started on the complete other side of Gans and suddenly we were in the middle of the loop I knew so well.

Shaking my head.

The next morning I was writing in bed, as I always do. Suddenly I realized that bluff we’d sat on was one and the same as the “other” bluff that I’d been talking about. I just suddenly knew it. And I saw how the Boy Scout camp would have been “that way” and how I was suddenly in familiar territory. I had the sensation of a perfectly smooth piece falling right into its precisely carved place in my brain. It felt amazing. Even exhilarating. I knew exactly where we had been and I felt, too, that the whole of Gans Creek Wild Area was now known to me. To paraphrase Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love, we had become the mayors of Gans Creek’s ass. Wow.

I immediately took Miles in the car to look again at the bluff I hadn’t recognized the day before, to show my brain that it was indeed the very same bluff–a beautiful spot I have known for years and had just taken photos of a few days earlier.

Why didn’t I realize it? We had approached from the other direction, from a trail I have never taken, after walking through unfamiliar territory. I expected that everything I saw on this “new” loop would be new to me. I did not expect to land in a place I had known so well. And so I did not even see it.

This taught me something about expectations, attention, and perspective. When you expect a new, fresh experience, that’s what you’ll get, even to the point of not recognizing something you love right in front of you. Expectations can diminish your experience. Attention depends upon what you expect, as well. I was definitely paying attention to the landscape, the trees, plants, rocks, and my friends. But I was on an expedition in new territory, following a leader. When you approach a thing or a place from a new direction or someone else’s point of view, you might see it very differently. I have revisited that spot in my mind from both directions several times since then, recalling how I felt both times. Maybe it’s just me, but I still find this fascinating.

I feel like I can now apply this huge discovery to my whole life. Whoa. Expectations, attention, and perspective. I am the mayor of my life’s ass.

Then again, I could have early dementia . . .

“I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.” ― G.K. Chesterton

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”