I Want To Create Beautiful Things

Today is my 50th birthday.

I don't feel 50 years old. I'm not sure what 50 years old is supposed to feel like, but...

Maybe that's what turning 50 is supposed to feel like...wondering if THIS is what it's supposed to feel like.

As this day approached, I really began thinking about what I want from the next fifty years and beyond.

The proverbial midlife crisis is well known, but I don't want to talk about that.

I want to talk about beauty.

Sure, I'm taking stock of where things are at and where I'd like them to go, but I've realized that I want one very simple thing from life: I want to create beauty.

Late last summer, my live in family moved to a very different part of the US. Here, there are mountains, and snow, and the thing I have been delighting in recently: Spring flowers!

More and more I realize that I am much more than a musician. “The Warrior Musician” is but one aspect of me. Creativity in many forms lives within me. Yes, it’s been said that all humans are creative, and I truly believe that. I’ve come to learn that for me, creativity seems to be a compulsion. Whether it’s a different way to organize the materials for my many interests/hobbies, or it’s a new twist on a family favorite recipe, I feel this deep urge, almost an urgency, to create.

I just finished a pottery wheel class at a university. My sophomore classmates, with their wheel experience in high school made some truly amazing things! I had never touched a pottery wheel before this class. My finished work is crude by comparison. Glaze didn’t stick in some areas, the bottoms and lips of some pieces, too thick, yet, I can look at these beginning efforts and appreciate the process.

I look at these initials pieces and think “I made that!” In partnership with the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, I brought this work into existence.

You see, no matter what the end result is aesthetically, THAT is beauty!

I suppose it’s the music therapist in me that knows that process is more important than product, but this fundamental truth has become embedded in my soul.

Create!

It does not matter what the end result is; it will be beautiful (I hope it goes without saying that I’m referring to creation of things that add beauty to the world, and not things that create division or destruction).

I enter that caveat because it’s my birthday and today I choose to attend to only what is good and beautiful in the world.

All creation in a good way adds beauty to the world.

I am learning how to draw, travel journal, nature journal, crochet, make paracord bracelets…in the Fall I’ll be taking a glass making class.

I ask that everyone who has made it this far in my birthday musings grant me this one wish: try something creative you’ve always wanted to, but never have. It can be singing in the shower, trying that instrument you always thought would be fun to play, it can be that sketchbook no one else sees, or a journal, or blog, or photography or a recipe just for you. That’s how beauty starts. With the desire, and the action, and the willingness to keep doing it.

To paraphrase “The Most Interesting Man In The World” from Dos Equis commercials, stay beautifully creative my friends.