My wife—a yarn & crafts shop owner—and I sometimes joke that essentially we’re both in the business of providing-psychological-support.
This Guardian article, which I forwarded on to her immediately, being a case in point:
Nicola Davis
Hurrah! Knitting for the win!
🧶🏆🙌🏻
Ok, you can stop reading now, missus. You’ve read all you need to read…
Hey, d’you want a cup of tea? I’m making! We can talk about maybe running joint retreats together! 💞
[Whispers… 🤫]
What if it’s not the knitting, doing it?
What if that wholesome pastime of yours, that you rightfully love and dutifully make space for in your life because it’s how you “look after your mental health” isn’t actually the cause of your good feelings?
What if the feelings of connection and oneness and peace and stillness and flow and love and fulfilment are just who you really are, underneath the noise of your psychology?
What if all these wholesome practices (as well as all the more physically and societally damaging ones our minds get addicted to) are just ways we’ve learned to give ourselves permission to temporarily drop all the BS reasons our mind is giving us as to why our essential nature—what we always come back to—is not peace and stillness and love etc?
(Because—think about it—if it were ‘the thing’ doing it, you’d get these feelings every. single. time. you did the thing, and are you telling me you’ve not tried doing the thing to feel better and yet found yourself still to be in a foul mood? Really???)
What if…?
🤔
Look, I’m not going out of my way to be a killjoy here. Do whatever “makes you” happy (especially if it brings things of beauty into the world).
Please just know what’s going on ‘underneath.’ Because this next bit is super-important:
You don’t <<need>> to do anything to experience what you already are.
💝
Giles