Ep #184: The Moment When Love Begins: A Story

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed, or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind, and much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left,” Mary Oliver from her poem Don’t Hesitate.

This week’s episode, my friends, veers more toward the realm of story – and obviously poetry – than some other episodes. I’ve given you some very dense episodes in these past few months, and today, wanted to share a story and the poetry of it.

In last week’s episode, I invited you to explore what is real and true for you, and then to revel in that. So, in today’s episode, I am sharing a little bit of an experience and a conversation that I had, and my revelry of it, and why, for me, it holds such meaning and brings such joy.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Art School Podcast. And, as I was just about to say those words, I had this little hiccup of fear thinking, “Gosh, in the last episode I recorded, did I start by saying, thank you for listening to another episode? Or, did I begin the proper way?” Sometimes, I forget what I say and to whom and when, and we’re just going to carry on.

And so, it’s perfectly meta that these cluster of episodes, we’re talking about real-deal energy. We’re talking about the paradox of an extraordinarily creative way of being, and how one of the pathways to that is allowing yourself to come as is. We’re talking about the paradox of learning how to be safe enough, to feel safe enough to be yourself, to create as yourself so that you can be the artist that you’re meant to be, live the life you’re meant to have, so that you can really flow everything that’s available for you to tap into and express all the potential that’s within you.

One of the practices for cultivating this extraordinary way of being – which for me too, it’s about cultivating a sense of deep safety, so you are safe enough to actually be your pure, essential self.

I know on one hand that sounds crazy, that we have to cultivate safety just to be ourselves. But then I also know that you’ll probably get it. You’ll probably get how much practice we have in being consumed with the distraction of protecting ourselves, so that we can either be protected, or be invited to the cool kid’s club, so that we can make ourselves worthy.

Last week, we talked about that too, the difference between that authentic, true-to-you ambition, being in love with what you do, who you are, and how you do it. And then getting caught up in the distraction of trying to get the attention of or impressing or get the permission from people who are actually being authentic, who are impressive to us and really living the kind of lives that we want to live.

So, I’ve been mentioning here on the podcast, and we talk about it in the Art School Mastermind, this approach that the best way I can describe it is that you are combining, fusing a kind of mindfulness. I have a long history with mindfulness, dating back to right after law school when I did one of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness-based stress-reduction programs. Absolutely life-changing, and fast forward to the way that those practices have informed not only my art, but my approach to coaching.

So, fusing that mindfulness tradition with also acknowledging – I think this is implicit in mindfulness, but I want to point it out more, to make it more expressed and explicit in order to, I think, make it more clear to us what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and to make the rewiring and reconditioning of our body more powerful.

That by noticing these moments, when we’re in a certain energy, and noticing what’s happening physically for us, notice what’s happening in our mind, notice what’s happening spiritually and acknowledge that, and memorize that state, tell yourself you are memorizing that state so that you can shift your way of being and your states of being from survival to creative, from closed and contracted and fearful to open and safe, that can be done from, like, a bottom-up body level.

And oftentimes, that’s what’s required, rather than trying to think our way through this. So, what does that mean for today’s episode? What does that have to do with today’s episode? Story. I wanted to share with you a recent small – and for me also very significant – story of when that happened, with the intention that some of you listening will be able to feel that kind of energetic shift and you will also get it through the power of story.

Also, I wanted to share it through this poem, which I chose because it fits in so well with the theme. And it also, on another level, speaks to a conversation, this conversation that I had just a couple days ago in New York City, that for me is really – as I’m reflecting on it and reveling in it, really to me just feels like a celebration of the person and the artist and the work that this client, this artist, this writer has done on their inner level and also in their external creative work.

So, many of you have actually met this client of mine before. She has been a pillar of the Art School community. So, those of you that have been in Art School know and love Zohar Tirosh-Polk. Others of you will recognize her name from a podcast interview that I did with her in the past. And if you haven’t listened to that one yet, I highly, highly recommend it.

I’m not going to go extensively into her bio here. Suffice it to say, she is an outstanding writer, playwright, TV screenwriter, extraordinary creative coach. So, if you are looking for a badass coach who speaks Art School speak, who is doing the work herself and creating not only amazing transformations within the Art School but also then for her own clients, I cannot recommend her highly enough.

So, when I was in New York City this past week, I had the opportunity to spend time with her in person after knowing and seeing her on Zoom the last couple of years. Oh my god, the glory of hugging her and seeing her in person. And sidenote, it makes me want to do this over and over again and have a lot more Art School in-person workshops and retreats. But I digress on that point for now.

So, Zoe was the best tour guide you could ask for. And we also got to have – I mean, it was an epic day and we had a lot of epic conversations. I mean the kind of conversations we have in Art School, but when you can have it in person and you’re walking around a great city like that, spectacular.

And one of the things we were talking about – because we’ve got a whole day to figure out the world’s problems – was how do you reconcile… And I’ll say right away, you don’t. It’s another paradox… the idea of benevolence in the universe, a benevolent universe and benevolent God, with all of the atrocity and tragedy and injustice and suffering.

So, I’m not going to try to wrap that conversation up into a neat, tidy bow for you here, but I was thinking of it again and things we talked about as I was preparing for this episode. And I was thinking about this poem from Mary Oliver, which I will read in its entirety here, again, and then I’ll go on into the rest of the episode.

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. there are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed, or about to be. We are not wise and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes, something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

Again, that poem is Mary Oliver’s Don’t Hesitate. And you can see too why it wants to be spoken on this podcast at this point in time for so many reasons. I mean, with everything happening in the Ukraine, and again all of the contrasting tragedy and suffering in the world, and then it can eb hard to reconcile how then do you turn back to reveling in the joy, including the unexpected joy and in goodness?

And she acknowledges she doesn’t turn from the fact that whole lives and towns are destroyed and we are not wise and not very often kind, and much can never, ever be redeemed. And also, and also, and also still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, going to those instances when love begins, when there is joy, and don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

I think the first reason that I thought I understood why my intuition handed me this particular poem was because of this line, “It could be anything. But very likely, you notice it in the instant when love begins.”

For me, that phrase, those words, “In the instant where love begins,” for me, that kind of love also speaks to this real energy that I’m talking about, to what is real and sacred, to what is the real deal. That instant when love begins, to me, speaks to a certain point in the creative process, a certain point in that birthing process of creating something new, when you realize that whatever it is that wants to happen through you is real.

You didn’t make it up. You didn’t just small-f fantasize it. You didn’t make it up, contrive it. Something begins in the instant when love begins and the instant when something real begins. And it’s a moment that I am so grateful and honored to have witnessed and get to witness over and over again for clients. That moment when love begins for them.

It could be a shift in understanding where then they see themselves in a new way and a new chapter in their life begins. It could be that moment when they have been talking about the work they want to do, but then all of us can feel it when suddenly it catches up to them, that this is really real.

That sense of real, to me, is also another word for love. That kind of real, that kind of love is the opposite of distraction, that kind of distraction we talked about in last week’s episode where you are embroiled in and wrapped up in trying to impress other people who are doing real things, who are really in love with their work and their life.

If you think for yourself, those moments where you notice it in the instant when love begins, when you’ve had those moments, that’s when you know you don’t need a scene. There is no scene. It is the opposite of chasing for a scene or for approval or looking outside yourself for external validation or to be anointed or chosen. You don’t want to be anywhere else but in that moment.

And here is one of the mystical things about those moments and being able to experience those moments in community, is that everybody feels it. Everybody feels when love enters the room. Everybody can tell when real-deal energy is in action, every single person can feel it and know it.

And then, the thing that – I mean, Mary Oliver is Mary Oliver. The thing that is so brilliant about this poem too is she’s been there. She knows this too and then knows the what the fear is that can come next. Because she writes, “Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

Because so often, when love begins, when something is real, you feel it within you. You feel, “Oh my god, this thing that I always thought was so far beyond me, I had a new taste of it. It is real. It is in me.” Then the brain, the fear, past conditioning swoops in and is like, “Well, that’s not going to last. Sure, that was a great Kum Ba Yah moment, but that’s not going to last and that’s not going to pay the bills.” But this poem is so instructive and generous.

She is saying, you know, whatever it is, she doesn’t even say, “Don’t be afraid it’s not going to last.” She nails it. She nails the human psyche and says, “Don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

And so, here is the story behind this. During my epic day with Zoe, who has done epic things throughout the course of the time that I’ve known her, and then blown her own past achievements out of the water just in the past two weeks, including but not limited to the fact that in the last couple of weeks, while her children also happened to be home on spring break and her mother was visiting from afar, she had an incredible opportunity and it required her to outline a TV series and pitch it to an executive producer in less than two weeks.

And she did it. And did it beautifully. And in her own words, did it in such a way that it was a revolution for her compared to her experience of completing a project like that and with that kind of timeline in the past.

And again, that’s just like another fragment, another fraction of what she’s done and just done even recently. So, as we were walking through Brooklyn – and I will never forget walking up this hill and she was outlining for me the story of this series and the lens in which she’s chosen to portray it.

It’s all so brilliant. And we get to the top of the hill and we sat down on a bench and we are overlooking the river, overlooking the New York skyline and she continues to tell me the story of this series.

And I have goosebumps. I have chills just remembering it. I had the delicious feeling of when you’re a child and you’re waiting or the next part of the story to unfold. And in my mind’s eye, I could see it like a kaleidoscope, this multifaceted, multidimensional, textured, rich story.

And I was mesmerized, captivated, transfixed, not only because she is an incredibly good storyteller, which she is. I mean, it’s what she does for a living. Also because of the meaning and the layers of meaning that move through this particular story, and then also not only because of that. Also because I recognized it as an experience, as one of these instances when something is born and something is real, the instant when love begins.

I think it’s so interesting working with artists and creative people – and I’ve had this happen so many times myself – that there can be different times when the realness of something finds you, when you feel it, when it enters the room, sometimes for a lot of people, it can be long after they’ve actually made the thing.

Some people, their brain never lets them slow down long enough for that to actually catch up to them. But that particular moment on the bench that story, the soul of that work, every bit as real as if I had just finished the series on my couch and in my living room and was cheering for the next series, the next iteration to come out.

Those kinds of moments, letting ourselves anchor in those and not being afraid of their plenty. Because they are there, they are available for us. And that’s what I wanted to invite you to do with this episode.

So, this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want to invite you to lean in and really work with me and coach with me. And in this episode, lean into those instances in your own life where you notice something changed, something’s different, now that’s real, love has entered the room, you have suddenly and unexpectedly felt joy, and don’t hesitate.

As Mary Oliver says, “Give in to it.” Whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Don’t spend time fearing the lack of it. It’s not made to be a crumb. Think about those moments of truth, of touching what’s real, of it touching and finding you, and revel in it. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. And if you want to be living the kind of life, the kind of life as the artist that you’re meant to be, living the kind of life that you’re mean to live where you’re saying things to yourself and having conversations with your fellow masterminders, your colleagues about, hey, don’t be afraid of its plenty. How good are you willing to let it get? Joy is not made to be a crumb. Give in to your genius, your ability to be an affluent artist, then I highly encourage you to apply for the next round of the Art School Mastermind.

We will have the link to application in the show notes and as always, you can always reach out to us by emailing support@leahcb.com and we can answer any questions you have. You can also find the link on my website, www.leahcb.com and then just follow the link for the mastermind.

To close, I just want to say, I think one of the themes in this particular episode is the title of that poem, Don’t Hesitate. And it fits perfectly with also the theme of this particular episode being celebrating Zoe’s achievements and everything that she has to celebrate because she also is representing so many of our Art School Masterminders who have so much to celebrate and who have gone through this process of having the dream and then realizing it, making it real, bringing it to life, having these moments where you feel the pull towards it, you might try to deny it, but then they give themselves to it. They surrender and give in to it.

So, not hesitating is what I want to say to you when it comes to going for your own creative goals and dreams, when giving yourself that self-concept of the affluent artist and letting yourself embody it. Don’t hesitate. Give in to it.

And I also wanted to celebrate Zoe and continue to celebrate all of my clients and all of your wins on this podcast because I know, the more you can see examples of what’s possible, then the more those pathways of possibility open up in your own life. The more that clears the way for you to move forward in your own life, in your own way.

Also, all of this creative energy is so – I don’t even want to say the opposite because that leaves it in relationship to. I don’t want to say antithesis because that leaves it in relationship to. It is a different place, a different paradigm, a different energy than competition.

The spirit of that poem, don’t be afraid of its plenty, joy is not made to be a crumb, when we are celebrating and acknowledging other people’s creative process, of really honoring the reality of the work, of the achievement, of the dream before it’s completely available to other people’s physical senses, like when we do that as a creative person and then we celebrate that with others, it widens, opens, expands what’s available to all of us as consciously creative humans, joy, creativity, affluence is not made to be a crumb. Don’t be afraid of the plenty in your life, my friends.

Have a plentiful and beautiful week, and I look forward to talking with you next time.