Sometimes I get lost — not physically lost, I live on an island for goodness sake! I get emotionally lost.

Does that sound weird? It feels weird. How old do I have to be before I always remember “who I am” — on the inside?

I know I’m lost when I forget how to have fun, or what makes me feel good about myself and about life in general.

I get lost when I over-think or over-work or over-worry about anything.

Worry is a product of trying to control life. Control is tricky. It can be a verb or a noun, sometimes it’s “good” and sometimes “not so good”.

Self-control might be the only kind of control we actually have, and that’s not even always true.

We might like to think we can control outcomes. We can’t, not really.

Hopefully, we know we can’t control others! Although that doesn’t stop people from trying!

All we can hope to control is our response or reaction to the world around us.

My antidote to getting lost is to look for the ever-present magic and mystery in life and to share it with others. These are some of the talismans I keep to remind me that all of life is magical.

Forgetting that magic and mystery ARE ever-present is fatal to my well-being, and, I suspect, to that of others.

I find the magic and mystery in life when I remember to look!

Last week, when I felt lost, I asked IWS what to paint. She suggested I paint the energy of “Beauty, Magic, Mystery, and Joy”.

I gathered all the magical objects I’ve been saving — the kinds of things that evoke questions or are beautiful in and of themselves (at least to me).

Then I closed my eyes and waited to see what my mind’s eye suggested.

This involves getting out of the way and trusting that whatever comes to mind is the “right” thing to paint.

My “Hide-N-Seek” painting process is perfect for this magical task and the painting was begun.

“Beauty, Magic, Mystery, and Joy” has been evolving for the past two weeks.

I remind myself often to “only paint what I know to paint”. This means I take my time to “Stop, Look, and Listen” to my painting between brushstrokes.

Part of painting magic and mystery is to not “over explain.”

That way the viewer can find their own levels of mystery and magic within the painting.

Once you find your magic and mystery in my paintings, please email me to tell me what you’ve found: patrice@artofaloha.com

A friend recently gifted me with eight or nine ceramic bowls that her husband had made. She has too many and he keeps making them.

I hesitated. They were all SO beautiful!

“No!” my friend exclaimed, “These are his “seconds”. If you look closely, each one is flawed.”

Slowly I put one aside, and then another, and another, being careful to not take too many.

Truth be told I would have taken them all — although I certainly don’t need them all, they were just So Beautiful!

As I was walking out the door, she said, “Don’t you want this one? I just love the colors on the inside.”

Of course I wanted that one! I just didn’t want to be greedy. I took that one too — it’s Stunning!

Heck, I even had the nerve to ask if it would be okay for me to share one or two with a friend (assuming I could bring myself to part with one or two).

“How rude”, I thought to myself, “but we’re friends”, I reasoned.

Except we’re sort of “new friends” if you know what I mean, so I really hope I wasn’t too rude!

As I left, I said, “I feel like a thief!”

My friend assured me, “no, these are all seconds — they’re flawed.”

I placed the bowls on the studio counter so Rebecca and I could “Ooh and aah” over them before I took some back to the house.

The bowls make us to want to have a party. We want to clean the studio and use all of the bowls for finger food.

That’s how festive they feel.

These beautiful bowls are one person’s idea of “seconds”, of flawed pieces of pottery, of an art form that didn’t quite meet the standards that they’d set out to achieve.

So what? They are still beautiful!

Most of us fall short of the standards we want to achieve.

We “fall short” because we’re moving forward, we are growing and expanding our universe. And we keep moving the standards further and further from where we began!

Creation and expansion are imperfect processes.

I appreciate the generosity of my new friend and I love the way I feel when I see and use my beautiful new bowls (“flaws” and all).

There is joy in feeling the heart-or-head-to-hand-to-creation connection coming through the bowls. These bowls are perfect to me, although they might be imperfect to the creator.

Handmade art has loads of qualities and character, and is always made by “imperfect humans”.

The more we’re able to put ourselves into our art, the better and better our art becomes, even when it’s “flawed”!

We love the perfect imperfections seen and felt in art that speaks to us.