One of my goals this year is to learn as much as I can about the practice of yoga. I could have picked a better year for it – when I could join a yoga studio and attend classes in person. But, alas, we are living through challenging times. I started reading through the Mahabharata, the Hindu classic about duty and obligation in a time of war, at the beginning of the year. My copy had been sitting on the shelf for a while now, starting to collect dust. Is anyone else out there guilty of collecting books along the way that are never read? This shortcoming – is it a shortcoming even, or just a benign addiction? – seems like a good New Year’s resolution to take up next year – making a commitment to reading through all the books on the bookshelf before buying another one to add to the collection. Anyways. While reading through the Mahabharata, I came across this quotation, and it seemed relevant to the direction of these postings: “without faith and chance, one cannot prosper, but without one’s action, fate and chance have nothing to work upon.” The passage uses a farmer to make the point. Whether or not a good crop is harvested has much to do with chance and fate, such as the weather conditions during the growing season. Yet, nothing will happen unless the farmer plants the seeds in the ground. It is an act of faith. The artist must follow the same prescription. She has to put something out there, and the more the better, for then the odds increase that chance and fate will favor her. I am sometimes just as reluctant to send my admittedly misshapen creative fruit out into the world. Let it all unfurl outward, like buds on the vine. See what happens. Let it grow.

Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash