The Art of Living

Burberry silk scarf
Aurate New York bracelet (c/o)
Maris Pearl Co. earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: The Fort Garry Hotel – Winnipeg, Manitoba

“Do you ever feel like you’re trying to make something happen that just isn’t meant to happen?”

A friend asked that question the other day. My answer was on the tip of my tongue almost before she finished the question. “Yes. The problem is that I don’t know what’s supposed to happen instead.”

“And if I do nothing,” we both concluded, “then nothing happens.”

“To make living itself an art, that is the goal.”
– Henry Miller

It didn’t used to be this way. Not for me, anyway. I was content to just follow along with the ebbs and flows of life because there were so many beautiful distractions. I lived like my life itself was art, my own masterpiece that I worked on constantly, building it to be more beautiful and intricate with every passing year. And I didn’t concern myself with career milestones. Why should I? There was so much that I found more important – discovering new places, taking photographs, meeting friends for champagne and long, meandering conversations. That list goes on and on. Like Henry Miller, I made living itself an art. The fact that I needed a nine to five to fund that was just a detail.

What was once a detail is now all I have left. I spend my days in transit between my bedroom, the office nextdoor, and the couch in my living room. Those long, meandering conversations that I used to love to have in cozy little wine bars – Langside Grocery was a personal favourite – are now conducted by video chat from the aforementioned couch. It’s an artless, charmless existence. And I find myself trying to make things happen, to make anything at all happen, to make it less mundane.

But you can’t just make things happen. You can’t force time follow an arbitrary schedule you’ve established. You can’t force it to do anything, no matter how hard you try – that’s what I’m realising, as the pandemic drags on. Not only is it nearly impossible to make living an art in the way that once felt so wonderfully effortless, but there is no way to bring that back, and no way to force a new kind of existence into being in the meantime. We just have to wait.

And in the meantime, we have to do something. But not, I realise now, just anything. The question, though, is if not this thing I’ve been pursuing for month, probably uselessly and certainly up to now fruitlessly – then what?

Shop the Post