Desire verus Doubt, 200 Years Later, The Dog Lies
Good Morning from Prince Edward Island,
Put the kettle on, let’s have a cup of tea and talk about happy things.
Rejoice in everything, even in small things. If you start rejoicing, even a cup of tea starts having a sacred significance.” – Osho
I have to fess up, today is Friday. I usually write on Saturday mornings, but unable to tomorrow. In any event, happy Saturday.
When I awoke Friday morning, the first sound I heard was of a Canada Warbler.
I gave thanks for the beautiful call to start my day. I started to think about the gift of sound or “listening.”
It most cases the word, listening associates with a conversation.
Intentional listening is a habit I would like to improve on. Having an overactive mind at times leads me to not being the best listener. Too often I assume what is being said and form the bias or answer before truly listening.
To listen, we need not only our ears, but we also need our eyes and heart open to the other.
For one thing, it allows the other person to receive the gift of feeling heard. The second thing, when we give wholeheartedly, we receive much more than we give.
Those who practice listening find it to be one of the most powerful and influential factors in human relations. It is a magnetic and creative force. In fact, those who listen to us are the very ones toward who we move. Listening to us creates us, unfolds and expands us. Ideas begin to grow and come to life within us. The same happens when we listen to others with an attentive, uncritical ear. Listening recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are recreated. ~ Kelly Bennet
Listening to our heart's desire can be a challenge as well. Divine or not, it is usually met with resistance, so begins, “the great wrestling match.”
Life experience is like sport, always desire vs doubt.
The team or player with the most desire wins. Even in most cases, their talent may not be in their favour.
This week, I was reading a great story in a BBC Music Magazine of desire versus doubt.
Composer, Clara Schumann was born in 1819 in Leipzig, Germany. Her mom was a fine pianist and singer and her Dad was a piano teacher.
Her husband, Robert Schumann was a renowned composer as well. His fame and folly of attempted suicide masked over her story.
As Europe’s ‘Queen of Piano’, composer, professor, and editor, she experienced the times of gender prejudice. Another cause of professional neglect.
200 years later her legacy is being celebrated. She helped evolve the direction of classical music. Now, she is now receiving the attention she deserves.
I have been listening to her beautiful music all week. The emotion of all that she was dealing with comes through each note.
While courting she and Robert Schumann composed music to have it played for each other. Her father was dead set against their courtship. The notes from the compositions were converted into words. Sharing music was their way of sending “coded” love letters to each other.
Unthought of at the time, she took her father to court to win the right to marry the man she wanted to.
Clara was a force. She won, they went on to have 8 children together.
Desire versus Doubt.
Desire: Clara shared these words with her father. “Composing gives me great pleasure. There is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness when one lives in a world of sound.”
Doubt: She once wrote, “I once believed that I possessed creative talent but I have given up this idea; women must not desire to compose-there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?”
After her husband's hospitalization, Clara shared a message with a friend. “My old friend, my piano, must help me in this. I thought what a splendid thing it is to be an artist, but I only realize it for the first time now that I can turn all my suffering and joy into divine music so that I often feel quite happy.”
When she was 12 years old, Goethe notes: “the girl has more power than six boys put together.”
After hearing her play, Louis Sphor comments, “her playing is distinguished from that of the ordinary prodigy in that is not only the result of rigorous classical training but also spring from the heart, as is testified by her compositions which belong, as does the young artist herself, among the remarkable phenomena of art.”
What is your heart's desire? What is the doubt? Love versus fear. Love always wins. Might you take some time this weekend and listen to your heart?
Get outside into nature. Lay in the grass, rest and listen. I know am going to this very day.
"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time." - John Lubbock
Wishing you and yours a wonderful weekend and a great week ahead.
With love from Prince Edward Island.
Bruce
ps.
A guy spots a sign outside a house that reads, "Talking Dog for Sale."
Intrigued, he walks in. "So what have you done with your life?" he asks the dog.
"I've led a very full life," says the dog.
"I lived in the Alps rescuing avalanche victims. Then I served my country in Iraq. And now I spend my days reading to the residents of a retirement home."
The guy is flabbergasted.
He asks the dog's owner, "Why on earth would you want to get rid of an incredible dog like that?"
The owner says, "Because he's a liar! He never did any of that!"
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