A light joyousness

Julia ♦ March 25, 2021 ♦ 2 Comments

This photo I took at Keukenhof, Netherlands, in March 2007
seemed the perfect background for this quote from Matisse.

Hats off to Matisse!  I think he had a good attitude. Unfortunately, I sometimes want to make sure at least some people know just how hard I am working.  I’m not sure whether that’s a tendency to play the martyr, or a subtle way of trying to make sure I don’t get buried any deeper under piles of undone tasks.  But I suspect it’s more fun to be around someone who makes it all look easy and fun.

How about you?  Do you like it when people think everything comes easily to you?  Or do you want them to know it’s not easy at all, but you’re hanging in there anyway?  I can see advantages both ways, can’t you?

For those of us who have a hard time making it look easy, what are some ways we can achieve at least a touch of that light joyousness Matisse describes?  We might not produce colorful canvases as he did, but surely our daily lives are works of art in progress.  How can we lighten up the world, for ourselves and for others, without shirking our daily responsibilities?

One year ago today:

Diligence and labor

REAL TIME UPDATE FROM ALEXANDRIA, 3-25-14:  This is getting almost comical.  Almost.

These are the plants that were pictured here recently, photographed in happier times.

The view from my craft room window, 3-25-14.

Here’s the view from where I sit right now, at the computer, 3-25-14. Here we SNOW again…

This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.