-but there is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere.

I have been so introspective lately. I have, for the most part, been trapped inside my head. Thinking about life and love and God and me and everyone and everything else. But, this is not an unusual occurrence. My mind has always had a knack for getting ahead of itself. I pretty much specialize in over analyzing.

Analyzing the bigger picture helps me de-stress when I have the time to really let my mind wander. I always contemplate life's many questions (the "whys" and the "what ifs"). I am continually trying to pin point the ones that cause me stress and the ones that calm me down, both big and small.

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R. M. Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" has been my philosophical life guide for the better part of the last 8 months, the entirety of 2011. My paperback copy (same as depicted above) has been re-read, shared, recommended, and never far from my bedside table. I flip through the pages daily, scouring over my viscously underlined sections to find beautifully poetic phrases about life, love, art, direction, and uncertainty (pretty sure those would be my main questionable, in-need-of-guidance, life topics conveniently aggregated into a collection of letters.. amazing!).

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Seriously? Best advice ever and my favorite passage from the book. I can nearly recite it. I think of it whenever I let my mind wander to those questions that leave me feeling stressed or discontent. It never fails.

I've been using my introspective-Lauren time to look within for creative inspiration. I often let external pressures and fear of criticism prevent me from really opening myself up creatively. Well, surprise! Rilke has advice for that too:

..all critical intention is too far from me. With nothing can one approach a work of art so little as with critical words... Things are not all so comprehensible and expressible as one would mostly have us believe; most events are inexpressible, taking place in a realm which no word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are works of art, mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures.. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart.

Well then.

He is so right. If i fear the criticism and opinion of others with respect to my art, how will I ever let myself grow (both creatively and personally)?  It is all about exploring your mind and heart without fear or restraint. In art as in life.

So, I'm taking the advice. Attempting to rid myself of fear without seeking external reassurance. I'm looking inward and trying to take notice of the simple things: happy moments, small wonders, enjoying the calm. I am digging everything and I feel at ease. I am hoping for wonderful changes and many creative projects to come from all this.

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