Contentedness Is A Room

It’s a dime-store adage that “it’s up to us to create our own happiness.” I know from experience, my own lived, and others I’ve observed that idea is too far from true to be put into constant practice.

What inches closer to the truth is: “happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” It comes by silent invitation, on the still flower. It alights, then hovers, then moves along. But it does not endure. Creatives are all still flowers in some sense, and even in chaotic weather can be still enough for butterflies to pollinate.

I find my own happiness - simple as it may be - in the process of creation. I make everything - some things with more dedication than others, but I hire pens, paints, fabrics, hammers, cast iron pans, bits of old wood, shreds of paper. Using these and each of the six senses, I toil and develop a world of things I’ve made, continuously creating. My universe is cut and sewn; I make clothes in a series of repetitive processes that are fresh each time. I find infinite peace, and a constant stillness between stitches. Or in the delighted humming of a satisfied sewing machine. Or in the clink of cutting shears on a table when the last pattern piece is cut. And before even all that in the midnight hour before the dawn of creation, when I peer into my sketched design, and see in flesh and blood what has not yet been born.

Here, happiness is not the temporary, flitting visitor, but exists as a space, a place. It becomes something deeper, it becomes contentedness; the farthest reaches of happiness itself. Contentedness also requires stillness on the part of the creator, but compels something further. It necessitates a sacrifice, a surrender of control, fear, and the human preoccupation with counting time, trying lengthen each second. In the stillness of creation time is merely a butterfly, the world is a hazy window, and the subject is life itself, demanding no less. It is here that creatives work, and worlds are released. The room bounded in four corners by contentedness is both open and closed. Ideas circulate, some fall to the floor, some are resurrected from the trash. Imagination, resourcefulness, and concentration convene in this room, and surround us as both muses and furies. Fueled by inspiration and fire, most creatives find a sweet corner of this room, and build kingdoms there. And in doing so, I also find the happy magic of my days.

When the day ends, the world returns, and the hours resume their loud churning, I can’t help but look at how far my creations have come. Not just for the things, the beings themselves, but for the space of contentedness. I know the room will not be the same tomorrow, or any other time. I know the space where the depths of happiness have nested will shift with each new project. This rooms exists only as the precise moment between breaths. I cannot be rebuilt. While what I make may live long beyond me, maybe forever, these still moments were designed at best for the lifespan of the butterfly. After each long foray into this space, we tend to take and release a huge breath. One that’s been held the whole time, with focus and patience on what is yet to come.

After the breath comes the stretch. While working, my mind perceived time only vaguely, dancing about flowers. My body by contrast has kept the tally, and after hours bent over needles, pins, and threads, my aches tell me how long it’s actually been. From these I can finally appreciate the space itself, and realize how happy I was fussing with a half-formed pattern, cramped over a chatty serger, and finally admiring the day’s work on my dress form. I wonder if the universe, in its infinite stillness, found contentment over the long hours of its own creation? I imagine I can know only after I’ve stopped counting the many lives lived in my own happiness.