SELF WILL

I maintain my father’s blog, and on Wednesdays, I post paintings from long ago, i.e., Way Back When Wednesdays. It is neither here nor there, except that it got me reflecting on some of my old images. That leads me to think about Nola Mae and my favorite photo of her.

For those of you who were clients of mine back in the salon/hair days, you met Nola many times as she was the salon mascot, though matriarch Diva would be a better descriptor. Nola was an English Bulldog. I got her as a puppy, and she went to work with me every day. She was stubborn as a stump in frozen ground. I miss her a lot. What I like most about this photo is that I don’t know which would have won an argument; the cow or Nola Mae.

Thinking along these lines and embracing the 12-step principles of surrendering self-will and accepting powerlessness are often confusing to me, even now. It is so easy to be RIGHT! -and in most of those times, in retrospect, I was wrong.
ACIM encourages me to ask myself, Would you rather be RIGHT or happy? That helps sometimes, but not when my ego fears some kind of loss. 12-Step principles encourage using The Serenity Prayer and the surrender of self-will in step three; powerlessness. But again, depending on how much fear or worry is involved, that can be problematic too.

So when I am in the RIGHT, the thing that cracks the shell, just a tiny little bit, is praying, or asking, if you prefer, for willingness to be willing to take those actions.

My favorite line in Anthem, Leonard Cohen’s song, I find to be so true:

–“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in“