(Content warning: the following writing has personal pieces of me in it, including the loss of my father.)
Once upon a time in a faraway land, back when my delighting in everything soulful and living related to my father was vibrantly alive (he heartbreakingly died back in 2017), he verbalized to me in no uncertain terms that he was a student in a painting class. I was a bit astonished because my father was never an artist, and it felt ever so slightly off-brand, as the youths might declare. He was a profoundly hardworking pediatric oncologist. He fit the “doctors with atrocious handwriting” stereotype perfectly. I could barely make out a word of his professorial scribbles. He also had Dementia and suffered deficits with fine motor skills due to a neurodegenerative illness. Hence my wonderment. My dad sent me what he defined as “a painting of Lily,” his fiercely beloved youngest granddaughter and my deliciously precocious niece, who was precisely 3 years of stardust old. I was blindsided to see a simple, lopsided circle that he had painted to represent my lil’ peach. My reaction was close to horror. Precipitously, I yearned to comprehend the darkness of wondering how he went from being a renowned and prolific pediatric oncology researcher to the childlike painter of this lopsided circle. I was deeply engaged in what I wish to pronounce as “an Orientation Towards Absence Mindset.” I was solely witnessing that which was missing; his capacities had diminished ardently, and I was beholden to the pronounced degeneration of his spirited embodied body that was, by tooth and nail, and with copious bandages, signed up for a bicycle race, and an alchemy of his even more sparkling mind.
Why did I have to live with an orientation towards an “Absence Mindset”? Because I was stuck engaging in self-pity and forgot that I could also engage in a “Presence Mindset.” When I soul-shared the childlike “Circle” that somehow captured the loss of him to a delighting in being wisehearted friend, who we may even call a ‘True Other’ spontaneously, who happens to also be a psychologist, she declared in no uncertain terms that “it was beautiful!“ that he was choosing to paint “love.” I was suddenly profoundly conscious of that which was present and exuberantly sparkling through the childlike painting; a beginner’s mindset was also present. My sudden shift in orientation toward a “Presence Mindset” softened me into an expansiveness of permission to be astonished by how nourishing this activity was for his soul. All of the objects of love and vibrancy were captured in that one Circle of life and meaning. He had gone back in time to a younger, more childlike part of himself, which, too, was represented with life-nourishing simplicity.
This one I am prescribing to the masses. There exists a profound difference in perspective when we radically change orientations from “Absence Mindset” towards “Presence Mindset”. May your vibrancy be exuded in the latter. Here’s to more of that!