Valentine's Day: Passion, Peace, and Purpose An Original Article with Artwork by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Valentine's Day: Passion, Peace, and Purpose

by Karen S. Wiesner

Copyright @ Karen Wiesner 

Clematis Vine on Trellis Sketch Rendered in B&W with Minimal Colored Pencil 

  

It's hard to celebrate Valentine's Day when you consider the fractured state of the world. When you look around, you don't have to search to find the bad. It's always there, everywhere your eyes land. It calls attention to itself. It vies for our attention like a proud toddler parading around his newly completed artwork. Negativity wants to steal every part of our focus and schemes to infect and bring us down, preventing positive change from taking root and spreading hope. Bad news will find you every second of every minute of every single day. It's everywhere, determined to suffocate you and steal all the joy out of your life. This is the case, without fail, and forever. You don't have to take a single step to find negativity or bad news because it will find you first. You can't hide from it, no matter how much you might want to. 

The good stuff, the good news, exists in this world, but it's much harder to see, let alone find. You actually have to go looking for it and even then it wouldn't be easy to locate. It's rare you'll ever find it. You have to make a dedicated effort to seek for it, long and hard and with everything in your being. Often, it's like cutting against the grain to even make this effort.

Here's the truly amazing part, though: You don't have to go searching far and wide for the good in life and things that feed your passion. In life's often times' contradictory and ironic serendipity, the things that bring true, inner peace and purpose are already inside you.  These things are made up of who you are and what you already love. 

Sometimes we feel so lost, we don't know how to tap into our passion, peace, and purpose, in part because they require you to look within instead of without (infinitely harder for most people), and they demand your devotion--both your time and your energy, which can be in short supply when there are so many other things vying for both. It'll take strong will, but if you can free up for yourself just fifteen (even five, if that's all you can spare) minutes of every day to draw out the passion that gives you joy and imparts, alongside it, peace and purpose, you'll see the entire world from a different perspective. Don't let anything distract you for those five to fifteen minutes. Shut out the world. Analyze yourself and the things you love, the things you're drawn to, the passions that bring out the very best of you. 

You probably won't need money to bring out that passion because, always, these kinds of things come from within. (I believe they're instilled inside us at conception.) I can't imagine you won't recognize it because you'll come to life and light up from within when you identify your passion--it's the missing piece that is you. This is your happy place, and here you belong; here (together with this piece/peace), you become what you're meant to be. 

Be aware that what you're searching for probably isn't larger-than life, nor is it an ethereal or even an ephemeral thing that wins you fame and fortune. It may not even be a single thing. It could be and probably is more than one, each fitting together and allowing you to find peace in a chaotic world and giving you the motivation to pursue it each and every day. It's the quiet passion deep within your soul that says, "This is where I want to be. Where I'm me. Where I'm happiest. Where I'm whole. Where I can do the most good for myself and others." For some, that's immersing the self in nature and the quieter, more solitary aspects of the earth. For others, it's in books or art or learning. Still others only find peace when they empty the self and give to those in need. 

Whatever your passion is, that's where your main focus should be. Think about this: If you spend your entire life fixated on the sad state of the world, all the negativity and bad in it, and on a volatile future churning out doom and gloom left and right, the present will pass you by and you'll miss everything that could have been worthwhile. Cut out what brings you down wherever and whenever you can without isolating yourself completely from it. (Hermits rarely make the world better for themselves or anyone else.) 

It requires willpower to live in the present and make something good out whatever's before you in the place you're occupying, in this time you're given. If you find the things that feed your passion, you'll experience both peace and a sense of purpose. You'll be doing something that gives you hope and roots and a place to exist that feels safer than anything the world can ever provide. When those things occupy your time and energy, you can let go of all the things that you have no control over in this world. You'll find both a will and a way to reconcile with them because you're doing your part in bringing something worthwhile into being.

Your life and the way you live it can bring inspiration, illumination, and motivation to everyone around you--even without you doing anything except pursuing what you love, and spending your energy and focus on them instead of on all the negative stuff. Trust me, the world does not need or even care about your attention, as hard as it clamors to steal every ounce of it, nor will it ever reward you the way inner passion, peace, and purpose do and will--without restraint and perpetually if you remain dedicated to cultivating it. 

In truth, I don't think most of us even need to hunt for our passion, peace, and purpose. You know what yours are. What you may lack and are probably looking for is the time to immerse yourself in them. By committing yourself to just five to fifteen minutes of every day without distraction to pursue at least one of these things, you live in the present and invest in the future. Don't let anyone or anything take those minutes away from you. If you've only just started on a passion you've wanted to devote more time and energy to, what small goals can you set to see it come to fruition? Take a lesson from a gardener: Most of the work happens in advance of the season we're looking forward to. We plant bulbs in the fall in hopes they'll come up and bloom in the spring or summer. If we didn't plant and prepare in the present, nothing can happen in the future. 

This Valentine's Day, think about your passions and how they can bring you peace and purpose today and throughout your lifetime. Start in the present, planting seeds for the future. If, as I have been for the past few years, you're aching for a return to things that motivate you to be your best self instead of leeching the life out of you, sit down and draw up a table of your passions. What three things most define who you are and what you love to do? Below each passion, include how those passions present themselves in your favored activities. My own trinity of passions looks something like this: 

Passion #1:  Writing	Passion #2:  Art	Passion #3:  Music
Devotionals	Sketching and illustrating (colored pencils, painting, etc.)	Listening to
Articles/essays	Gardening	Playing piano and singing
Reviews	Simple living, going back to the basics, and making everything homemade--including food, decorations, greeting cards, and gifts for loved ones	Songwriting and composing

I want to do so much more of all of these things in the future. While I'm retiring from writing fiction (as soon as I can manage it--other than children's stories), I will never stop writing. I feel like I've just started with the last two--these little seedlings are just sprouting. There are so many angles to pursue, my days and energy are bursting with them. All of it makes me eager for the future when I can hopefully see them bloom and blossom. 

Once you've established a routine, let your passion grow. Take more time for these things and give them the majority of your focus because they're the important things in life, the tasks that you'll feel good about in the end because they'll shape you and touch the lives of everyone around you. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Review for The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner Combined with an Original Article: Unique by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Review for The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner

Combined with an Original Article: Unique

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  Beware spoilers! 

Published in 2018, The Sisters of the Winter Wood is the debut novel of literary agent Rena Rossner, who lives in Israel. I really don't know how to categorize this unusual story. It's a blend of magic and reality, fantasy, folklore, cultural history (specifically Jewish mythology). As to whether it's young adult, I'm not certain. Both protagonists are teenage girls, but I don't know if the intention was for it to be read only by young adults. I was looking for a new audiobook and this one came up, promising to be something atmospheric and supernatural. It was both. The narrator, Ana Clements, was the perfect choice for this material, and I'd go so far as to say that no one else could have done it better. 

In this tale, 17-year-old Liba and her 14-year-old sister Laya live with their parents in a remote village. They've been raised in the forest in a very insular way by their Jewish father and converted-but-never-truly-accepted mother. When their parents are forced to leave the girls at home because the roads aren't safe in order to visit their dying grandfather, the sisters are thrust into secrets and discoveries they could never have imagined. Liba, like her father, has the ability to transform into a bear. Laya and her mother can become swans. Neither girl ever had a clue about this prior to their parents leaving. Overnight, the entire world changes for them as dark forces gather and the village is plunged into danger. 

In ways, I found it unfortunate that the author chose to reveal the shapeshifting abilities when the girls are teenagers. So much of this book was overwhelmed with the angst and ardor of two young, impressionable girls who long to explore their sensuality, despite the environment they were raised in. While I found the cultural aspects of the story intriguing, these characters were painted as good, responsible daughter (Liba) and stupid, flighty daughter (Laya). Combine that bland ordinary (in my opinion anyway) with the persecution of a people wherever they go, seemingly, and it strongly began to feel like there was a wider agenda being served up in this chill, supernatural setting. I was looking for the extraordinary, so for that reason, I found myself mildly disappointed when the tone of the story seemed to change to something much more mundane, like bigotry. 

Despite that, as the kiss of winter begins making itself known in my area of the world along with the promise of Thanksgiving and Christmas, like the unmistakable scent of cinnamon and pine needles in the air, I couldn't stop thinking about the deeper issues this story undergirds and makes haunting with its icy refrain. 

"UNIQUE" 

Liba and Laya live in a world that isn't all that different from the one you and I inhabit. That world and this one seems to want to put everyone in little boxes that may not fit and then persecute those deemed undesirable while they're there. Just like Dr. Seuss's Sneetches story, this is one of the things in this life that should never be. Inside those shackled boxes, we learn the horrors of judging, racism, prejudice, genocide… The list of monstrous behaviors is endless for those who see themselves as superior to all others, so much so that they commit atrocities on other human beings. When people begin to think of themselves as special--even chosen by God (why is it that so many madmen in the history of the world believe that?)--sometimes they view this as permission to do terrible things to others who they see as different from them. 

We all share similar origin--whatever color our skin is, whatever the culture or community or religion or gender we're raised in. We're also all born with a predetermined appearance (based on what our parents impart to us genetically), and there's very little we can actually do about what we're given in an external sense. Physical attractiveness is little more than subjectivity anyway. Two people will never agree on what makes anyone beautiful, so why are we so fixed on the outside shell of a human being? Frankly, it's all stupid. Make no mistake--the "ugly" and the "lovely" are both given these things at birth; no one chose them or can claim that they had anything to do with their own fortune or curse in that regard. While it's important to take care of ourselves so we're healthy and fit and as attractive as we can be externally, in truth we should simply be more accepting of each other's exterior appearance, our race, our culture--and our own--yet we're not! No generation ever really learns from this fatal flaw in our thinking that seems to be a factory reset from one age to the next. It's completely senseless how human beings create innate separations in classes, races, genders, and religions. What a celebration it could be if only we could rejoice over the differences that make each of us unique! 

It takes a tremendous amount of grace and character to accept our differences. Twice as much to accept others with the same equanimity! That's why it's so important to put the majority of our focus into what can be controlled, what can be changed, what can be built and bloomed and become--the internal aspect of who we are, the person inside, the being we want to be more than anything. That's where true beauty can be refined. The interesting part about that is that inner beauty can transform the outer shell. A person so remarkable and loving can be physically astounding, even if realistically the outer package may not suggest it can be so. True inner beauty is also the lasting part of a person's identity. Inner beauty transforms every aspect of our being, including our perspective of the world around us. 

I don't believe I'm unique in that I want to be remembered for the person I was in life, for inner beauty and goodness. That's all that really matters in the end. Those are lasting things that can live on even when I'm gone. We can actually make a mark on this world in that way. But it requires us to let go of vanity and accept who we are, where we come from and how we were raised, even what we look like. It requires not seeing ourselves as superior to all others and to instead see everyone as unique and worthwhile. 

Focused on what matters, build a life that has purpose and meaning. It will outlive you, I promise. You'll never regret that part, and it is what will give you joy, satisfaction, and ultimately contentment. The only person you have to give an accounting to while in this life is yourself. So be the inner person you want to be without shame or regret. It will reflect on the exterior. That is something no one can take away from you. 

Never mind the irony that I'm suggesting that you read The Sisters of the Winter Wood (a very Jewish story, at least on the surface) at this time of year--whether the Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday--when most hearts turn to being mindful of what we have. During this time, we seem to reflect more on the things that matter. To seeing the good in ourselves and in others, to being the hope, benevolence, and goodwill that we want to spread to all. Ultimately, this story I'm reviewing this week will make you realize the heart of what's important in life and the role each of us play in the outcome of good and evil. Our choices can impact everything in and around us. Be a change and influence for good. Be the goodwill and benevolence you want to see. Be unique. Above all, remember that the differences in each of us can become the very celebrations that make life worthwhile. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/