What I Learned from a Master of Calligraphy

'When you hold the brush, you smile." Kaz Tanahashi

This is a year that I am more conscious and intentional about living and fully experiencing the dreams that I postponed, which included studying calligraphy with a master teacher.

A couple of months ago, I did just that, I participated in a calligraphy retreat in the high desert of New Mexico with Kazuaki Tanahashi, a master of calligraphy, born in Japan in 1933 and is a Buddhist scholar, and peace and environmental worker, as well as the founding member of World Without Armies and a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.

To be creative is not so much an innate ability as it is an attitude toward life. Creativity requires, more than anything else, the courage to be bold and true to your vision of how to live and to be open to being surprised by what you find. To be creative is to allow your mind to wander off leash, to let go of ideas about how things should be to be open to how things are, and to dream about what is to come.

The retreat began with the simplest, most foundational calligraphy form: the teardrop. It was also the hardest because to make the mark of a teardrop requires ease, lightness, the capacity to smile even in the face of uncertainty, to accept that so-called mistakes are the beginning of creative effort.

This time practicing calligraphy left me with a deeper appreciation of the un-lived parts of my life. What are yours?