Finding Joy In The Process

I've been thinking about why it is hard for me to have fun, to just do something because I can, or I enjoy it.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that things only count if they're useful. If I make something, it should become a business, or at least a skill I can point to. If I want to spend an afternoon on something, I look for the reason first: who it's for, what it leads to, and whether anyone would approve.

I don't think I chose this on purpose. I think I learned it from how things felt along the way.

I was a crafty kid, always making something: folding, drawing, building things out of whatever was around. My father always had his shirts laundered, and when they came back home, there were pieces of cardboard holding them rigid. One summer, I was infatuated with horror movies (Frankenstein...this was the early 60s). I remember putting together pieces of cardboard with those brass paper fasteners in the shape of a person, the Frankenstein monster. It had movable arms and legs, and I was very proud of myself. I even think I wanted, or tried, to put on a play in the yard.

That is at least how I remember it.

I also remember enjoying the process, but feeling like I had to do something with it; it had to be productive.  I couldn’t do it just because it was fun.

Somewhere, I picked up the idea that "crafty" and "talented" were different things. Crafty was a hobby. Talented was the real thing, the thing worth taking seriously. Nobody said this to me outright, as far as I remember. It's more than that; no one seemed to notice what I made, ask about it, treat it like it mattered on its own, or see it as something worth investing in.

So I stopped expecting it to. Instead, I started looking for the version of things that would matter to someone else, things that could be justified.

That's the instinct I bring to almost everything: find the problem, solve it, make it count.

A labyrinth doesn't ask what it's for. It's not efficient... You walk toward the center, and then you walk the same distance back out, no shortcut, no prize at the middle except having been there. If I brought my usual instincts to it, I'd want to know why. What's the reward for reaching the center?

I think that's what I actually want to practice. Not walking a labyrinth itself, but the muscle it's asking me to use: doing something because I want to, with no one's approval attached and no destination beyond the one in front of me. It shouldn't feel odd or uncomfortable. I was that kid once, before I learned to ask permission first.

Maybe the walkout is the part I need most. Not reaching the center... I don't think that's actually the hard part for me. It's the return, going back over the same ground with nothing to show for it, and letting that be enough.