Roads to Joy

Both perspectives, it seems, are golden: the golden years we may have experienced, and the golden future we might hope to inhabit. Today I’m musing on the simultaneity of the visions; though we often think of looking back at the year gone by, or looking forward to the new year coming, I think I tend to discount our ability to look both ways at once.

If I keep the successes of the previous months in mind, while worrying for new creative endeavours in successive seasons, or even if I temper eager anticipation with a recognition of failures and falterings gone by, then I’m probably living on a more even plane. My challenge, all too typically, is that I tend to conflate mistakes, faux pas, omissions I’ve had, with my expectations of the future, and that mix-up colours my perspective negatively.

Perhaps this is an important reason why I’m often rather desperate to get any particular job done; it’s the finishing, rather than the finessing, that pre-occupies. And yet I’m learning, ever so slowly, ever so inexorably, that the persistent doing is an end in itself, and the finishing line is really not the only goal. 

Which is why good crafters spend time and care on their creations. As the Shaker community realised, from their inception, an aspiration to near perfection in craft, during the building of houses, furnishings and objects, is the point. A spiritual calling, as it were. If I were honest with myself, I’d be more aware that I spend a quasi-spiritual time trying to develop my writing craft, even while I bumble, rather shambolically, along on other physical, do-it-yourself tasks around the house.

But the Shakers sought to imbue their every activity with spiritual grace, so that their life perspective from start to finish was consistently looking towards perfection. I might aspire to that process, as a useful resolution for this coming year. 

In the meantime, the writing projects that I’ve embarked on are still compelling a tangible end product. My social history of ‘the golden years’ of our beloved philanthropic service organisation, the Allendale Lions Club, is very nearly finished. It’s been a labour of love, sometimes despair, as targets were missed and crucial images could not be materialised. But there are only a couple entries to go, and I’ve had a variety of cathartic experiences, of recognitions of human frailty as well as compassion, as the project developed.

My novel, in a romantic, historical fiction genre with literary aspirations, has been subject to a sequence of edits, over the past several months, and with some conscientious mentorship over the next few, keeping in mind the Shaker craft mentality, it may yet grow wings and fly. Peering rather further ahead, new thoughts are percolating about another novelistic project; presumption is being knocked back, but themes are beginning to coalesce.

So I’ve been looking back, and looking ahead, at the same time, and proceeding with some fair hope. Not an immediate joy, as such, more a realisation that perseverance too is a joyful pursuit, even through the trials and tribulations that might beset along the way.