I drove to Brook Hollow Branch Library this morning. It’s off 281 and Bitters. It’s not a very exciting building but I did what I could with it. The sun was coming up behind it so I tried to capture the shadows and highlights as much as I could. I think, as usual, when I paint it bigger I’ll have more room to play around and add to the character of the building.
I think this is the twelfth or thirteenth library I’ve painted. There are 28 branches, so I still have a ways to go. It’ll be cool to see them all together, hopefully in the gallery at the Central Branch. That’s my goal.
This weekend was interesting. Queen Elizabeth died, which reminded me of my grandmother dying. My grandmother was 97 when she died, the Queen 96. Saturday was my grandmother’s birthday, she would have been 98, and it was the day I met with my cousin to give him the painting I did of my grandmother. It was a lot. I wasn’t breaking down or anything, but I was emotional.
I have mixed feelings about the monarchy.
I have to admit, if we had a monarchy here in the U.S. I’d be a lot less anxious about Trump and MAGA and all the stress that brings. I would worry less about whether people think the election was rigged, whether they’re going to run for office so they can attempt a coup again, and just get on with it. I know the Queen wasn’t in charge of running the country, but if things did go awry, her opinion would have had a big impact on the country. I’d like to have some back up like that too.
Does the monarchy matter? My understanding is that Royalty exist for traditions, to remind the country of who they are, what they’ve built over the years, how they’ve changed, and what they stand for. Parliament exists to run the country. People are saying that the Queen was just a reminder of colonialism. I’d say yes, but she’s also a reminder of a lot more than that. I’m sure in 200 years we’ll be appalled by things that are going on today that none of us does anything about - human trafficking, personal data, kids online unsupervised all the time.
It’s hard to be happy and satisfied. I’m actually watching The Crown on Netflix right now and the episode I watched before the Queen died was the one where she has lunch with each of her children. I’m not sure how closely the show follows fact, but in this episode her four children were miserable. They complained. They were having affairs. They were already in to weird sexual stuff (Prince Andrew). I mean, they were some of the most privileged kids on the planet and they were miserable. The Queen called them ‘lost’.
It made me realize that even if you ‘have everything’ you can still be miserable, and lost. You can still focus on everything that’s not going your way. You can still focus on everything that causes you pain - my mother doesn’t care, I’m forced to live for The Crown instead of for my own happiness, people make fun of me, he’s more important than I am. It’s easy to see from this vantage point that they had a lot to be grateful for. Is it possible I do too?
A few years ago I made a point of changing the way I was thinking, change the thoughts that regularly go through my head. First thing upon waking I would imagine good things, like appreciation, optimism, fun, excitement, joy, and satisfaction. I’d push myself to imagine I was experiencing those emotions rushing through me. It wasn’t always easy, but over time it got easier. It had an impact.
I always believed when I was younger that depression was something that I learned. I grew to be depressed. And I believed that if I grew to be depressed, I could grow to be happy. It’s been a twenty year experiment and it’s been working. I do not experience the kind of depression I grew up with, nor the depression and PTSD I lived with in my early adulthood. It’s been work, but I can say that I often (more times than not) wake up feeling good. I wake up feeling optimistic and ready for my day. I don’t have many memories of feeling this good.
For years I tried to ‘work’ through my pain. It helped to a certain degree. There’s nothing as satisfying as working through a resentment and realizing what the root cause of my misery is (it’s usually my own selfish behavior that I’m angry about). And, there’s nothing like recognizing how my selfish behavior has effected others and then expressing remorse for it.
But, I would also say that sometimes I just need to stop focusing on what’s wrong. Sometimes the cause of my misery is just my habit of focusing on what’s wrong, or the habit of watching out for whatever could bring the next tragedy (that’s the PTSD). Sometimes you just forget (or never realize) that life can feel good. Sometimes you just need to remind your body what that’s like.