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"Light, the artist remembered, wasn't really drawn on the page.  Light came from shade on the page.  The light of our lives, she told herself, is formed by the darkness we place around it."   Trent Dalton: "Lola in the Mirror"                                                                                      There are moments in our lives that  are touched by sparkles of joy, known as 'glimmers'.   We would not, however,  notice these sparks of 'deLight' unless we also knew what it is to be in the shadows.

Numbers are abstract creations – invented to make our lives more efficient.  Yet we can also find ourselves structured, controlled and evaluated by them.  We count our time, how much has passed and how long we have left.  We count what we have achieved and and what it cost.  Joy, however, is fluid in nature.  It cannot be measured in numbers, it can only be felt, experienced, appreciated, known.

Life is a journey of many selves,

each gifting its learning to the next…

What wisdom will your future self be grateful for?

Within joy there exists possibility 

and within possibility, joy.  

It is possibility that hovers in the innumberable 

bubbles of ideas of what could be in life 

that float around us, waiting to be noticed, 

waiting to burst into reality.

Every sunrise can bring the dawning of hope.

Hope is complex, it is multi-layered.

It can radiate through our lives in vibrant colour, or it can peep timidly through the shadows that fall upon us.

Hope is the knowledge that all in life is constantly changing - that ‘this too shall pass’, and that each new day brings new possibilities.

Serenity: an inner stillness that arises when we are at peace with this moment in life, just as it is.  Serenity lies at the heart of holding our balance, even in the face of challenges.  We could see this as quite distinct from the vibrancy of joy in its sparkling elation.  Yet together they harmonise – joy infusing moments of serenity with light and colour, and serenity providing the foundation for joy to flourish into a sustainable and intentional state of being.

Can you find the serenity in this work?

Each moment of our lives contains an abundance of seeds  - the seeds of our future happiness.  Joy arises when we create the conditions for the seeds to grow.

What are those conditions?  They are ever-shifting and unique – and at the same time shared, constant and common.  We can create fertile conditions us around through our actions, but ultimately it is our thinking, the biome of our inner world, that nurtures the seeds of our future happiness.

Each moment of our lives contains an abundance of seeds  - the seeds of our future happiness.  Joy arises when we create the conditions for the seeds to grow.

What are those conditions?  They are ever-shifting and unique – and at the same time shared, constant and common.  We can create fertile conditions us around through our actions, but ultimately it is our thinking, the biome of our inner world, that nurtures the seeds of our future happiness.

We tend to believe that joy must be arduously sought, a treasure we labour to cultivate. Sadness, however, feels as though it descends upon us, falls over us uninvited. Yet both arise from our inner worlds, our learned thoughts and perceptions. We celebrate our cultivation of happiness, while remaining blindfolded to the mental work that fosters sorrow.  What if we believed we had equal ownership of all of our emotional experiences? How might our lives be different?

At the heart of true and lasting joy is

compassion – kindness to others, kindness to ourselves.  Kindness flourishes in the time that we spend sharing special moments with those we invite into our lives.

Compassion sees us sharing with all

as we would share with those we love.

At the heart of true and lasting joy is

compassion – kindness to others, kindness to ourselves.  Kindness flourishes in the time that we spend sharing special moments with those we invite into our lives.

Compassion sees us sharing with all

as we would share with those we love.

In deciding to find joy in imperfection

we find we are free to celebrate life,

and ourselves, just as we are.

This is when we see the richness of life’s colour.

In deciding to find joy in imperfection 

we find we are free to celebrate life, 

and ourselves, just as we are.  

This is when life becomes simple.

In deciding to find joy in imperfection 

we find we are free to celebrate life, 

and ourselves, just as we are.  

This is when the light shines through the darkness.

All that we experience in life is in a constant state of change.  We know this to be true yet time and again we seek to hold on to pleasure forever and run from feeling discomfort.

As we admire the poignantly fleeting exquisiteness of cherry blossoms, knowing they do not last is part of their appeal.  So too is joy found in simply appreciating the transient beauty of a moment.

We know that, no matter what, this too will pass.

“Who looks outside, dreams.  Who looks inside, awakens” Carl Jung.

We often mistakenly believe our control is over that which is outside of ourselves.   Rather the realm of our greatest influence and power for change exists within us.  Jung says "Hoping for outer things to change is to... live out of harmony with ourselves....your vision will only become clear when you look into your own heart.  Without everything seems discordant, only within does it coalesce into unity"

Is this a ‘jug’, or a ‘vase', or a scultpure?  Your label determines a thing’s identity and purpose. We label all that we experience, and by those labels we decide a thing’s meaning and whether it provokes joy or distaste.  For example - when we label a growing thing a plant, we are free to enjoy its natural beauty.  If we label it a weed, we may instead feel aversion, annoyance, displeasure.  Yet the thing itself does not change, it is no more or less beautiful for the label it is given.

 Is this a ‘plate’, a 'serving dish' or a ‘wall decoration’?  Your label determines a thing’s identity and purpose. We label all that we experience, and by those labels we decide a thing’s meaning and whether it provokes joy or distaste.  For example - when we label a growing thing a plant, we are free to enjoy its natural beauty.  If we label it a weed, we may instead feel aversion, annoyance, displeasure.  Yet the thing itself does not change, it is no more or less beautiful for the label it is given.

At the heart of joy is connection: connection to all that holds meaning for us.  Connection is fluid and evolving.

These bottles stand together, joined in a continuous colour spectrum.  Each coloured swirl in the design overflows with hand-carved bubbles that are individually unique but connected to all of the surrounding bubbles.

Connection is such: an unceasing journey that traverses a spectrum of experience – and through it all we are each both uniquely beautiful and intrinsically linked with all that surrounds us.

They say a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.

This is meant to remind us to appreciate what we have - to believe that it holds more value to us than what we see around us but do not have for ourselves.

But what if we do not need to have, to hold, to possess a thing to be able to appreciate its beauty?  Perhaps there is joy in the birds that fly freely through the bushes of our world.

Short blurb about this piece.