When you pull up Kerri’s page on iTunes you’ll notice that they have a hard time placing her music in a category. New Age? Easy listening? Classical? Country? One does not easily fit into the filing system until one can be clearly labeled. How can you be effortlessly labeled?
It’s a challenge all of us face. What’s the label? How do you fit? And (here’s the rub), it’s bad enough that the greater-world-filing-system needs a label to locate you, the real confusion comes in the labels we impose on ourselves. Are you a dentist? A liberal? A conservative? A mother? A foodie? Self-made, dependent, injured, Christian (which branch?), Muslim, agnostic, vegetarian, cowboy, rich, poor, retired, globalist, nationalist, capitalist, socialist? Do you “know?” Are you the righteous? Professor? How do you place yourself in the greater-world-filing system? Never mind how the “the system” attempts to squeeze you into a role, what’s the little box that you try to squeeze yourself into?
Is that who you are? Is that little box where you belong? Is it the totality of your being?
Sometimes I think we spend most of our lives dividing ourselves so that we might fit into a very small box. And, what we do to ourselves we most certainly do to others. They. Them. Not us.
Divide. Label. Locate.
Reduce. Contain. Shelve.
Although there is a certain amount of safety-feeling when living in a very small box, there is also very little vitality. Little things look big from the vantage point of a tiny box. Little things look threatening from the confines of a too-tight label. Little boxes are petri dishes for big fear.
We bandy these words about and paste them on the walls of our too-little-boxes: mindfulness, wholeness, vitality. “This life is not a dress rehearsal.” “You are infinite potential.” “Today is day one.” Maya Angelou, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Peace.
These ideals, all of them, wonder, magic, love, artistry, unity, harmony,…truth…crackle beyond the label. They are there – outside the box – and they are never found in the direction of division. They are always present if you care to put down the label-maker.
Get out of your box and turn around. Maybe spin around and around and lose your balance like you did when you were young and less needy of location. Look at the mystery that chases you and chase it. Play tag with this life. Remember how you laughed just because? Reach.
Kerri stood on the edge of a canyon and, although afraid of heights, she threw open her arms. Kirsten called me to tell me. “Mom’s on the edge,” she whispered into the phone. “I’m really proud of her.”
note: this composition has nothing to do with what I just ranted about except for maybe this: the only locators that really matter are the people who love you and show up for you. Your friends along the way. This is the label I am most attached to: Kerri and I are very rich in friends.
OLD FRIENDS REVISITED on the album RELEASED FROM THE HEART is available on iTunes & CDBaby
read Kerri’s blog post about ERLE
old friends revisited/released from the heart ©️ 1995 kerri sherwood
erle ©️ 2019 (and beyond) kerri sherwood
Filed under: Edges, KS Friday, Rants, Seeing, The Direction of Intention, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, boxes, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, erle, harmony, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, labels, life, magic, mahatma gandhi, maya angelou, mother teresa, society6.com/davidrobinson, society6.com/kerrisherwood, spirituality, unity, wholeness, wonder |
The Direction of Intention 
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