Cultivating a Whimsical Life

As a part-time member of the Goose flock, I walk in the back of the line of geese we make our way to swim in the creek.  I say hello to the berry bushes and hazelnuts that are ripening, playing my flute and put a swing in my step.  The Geese know where we are going, and Widdershins, the Gander, leads the way, his head held high and pride in his eye. As we walk, the Geese honk among themselves about the good patches of grass, taking a quick bite here or there.  I, likewise, forage for some berries and greens, snagging them with my teeth and getting down on the ground like them. They waddle along, delightfully plump from too many treats and abundance of summer grass and greens, honking contentedly as we make it to the creek.  We spend about an hour swimming at the creek, enjoying the nibbles of the fish on our toes.  We splash, we play, and I play my flute for the spirit of the river and trees.  I look up at the clouds through the trees and daydream, seeing the images and messages there. I wonder about an interesting aquatic bug I notice in the stream—what is the name of the bug? What is the bug’s life cycle? I take a photo of the insect research more later.  I spend some time in meditation and do a smoke-clearing practice.  The geese swim up to me to share that they are ready for their favorite treat, their grapes, and I sing a verse of a song I wrote for each of them as they eat their treat.  I lean against a tree friend, and we talk about what is happening on the land, checking in with each other. Turns out we are both ok the tree thanks me for the music and companionship.  The geese signal honk to share that they are finished swimming, so we head back up the hill, where we sit in the grass and nap for a bit.

This is a typical afternoon after work when the weather is hot at the Druid’s Garden…and this shares a few of the ways that I try to bring whimsy into my life.  What is a whimsical life?  I see a whimsical life is one that is full of enchantment, curiosity, wonder, joy, playfulness, unusual and fanciful.  It is a world rich with meaningful and regular interactions both with beings on the land: animals, insects, birds, fish, and even your domesticated pets.  It is also a world rich with the voices of the spirits and the simple joy of everyday life.

Cultivating a whimsical life is a balm on the spirit while we are living in this age of darkness and anxiety.  It is also a wonderful way of expressing a nature-based spiritual path and connecting with the world around you.  I believe that especially today, working to balance ourselves to find happiness and to recognize what we have control over is part of successfully navigating this age.  If all we do is focus on what is going wrong and our fears for the future, we miss out on a lot of opportunities to be joyful and whimsical in the present.  I would also argue that cultivating a whimsical life—and all the qualities listed here—are qualities that we can intentionally cultivate in our lives to bring more meaning and purpose.  Thus, I will share my specific approach to this, both in terms of actions and mindsets—and I hope you’ll also share ways you bring whimsy into your own life!

Cultivating a Sense of Wonder

A key aspect of cultivating a whimsical life is cultivating a sense of wonder and awe about the world.  This sense of wonder allows us to be deeply connected and in tune to the world around you, maintaining an openness and curiosity, and feeling the joy of being alive and part of this beautiful planet we call home.  When I think about wonder, these are the things that come to mind:

• Being in love with the everyday. Take moments in every day to simply explore and connect with the living earth. You can cultivate wonder about anything—closely look into a flower or a butterfly’s wings.
• Being reverent and grateful. Wonder is about value—it is about you taking the time to really experience what this beautiful planet has to offer in a way that is both reverent and grateful.  Express your gratitude and treat the world around you with due reverence and respect.
• Focus on the moment and slow down.  Wonder doesn’t come to people who are in a hurry or who are so enamored with their phones that they can’t stop and smell the roses.  Take the time not only to smell the roses but to stare into their spiraling petals, experiencing the wonder at the sacred geometry and medicine that they hold.
• Openness and Releasing Expectations: This is an important part of crafting a whimsical life—if we constantly have expectations for how things should be, we can’t experience how they are or the unexpected things that happen.   Let those expectations go.  Be present in the moment and simply experience whatever comes.

Cultivating Curiosity

Closely tied to wonder is curiosity. Curiosity is a very important quality that we are born with.  Small children have so many questions about the world, and even as adults, there is so much we can learn and explore through a curious spirit.  To me, curiosity is a critical part of whimsy—and yet it is a quality that often educated out of us.  I teach at a university, and I find myself encouraging my students (from first-semester undergraduate up to the Ph.D. level) to be creative, and many of them struggle with it.  I think this because curiosity is literally tied to divergent thinking and out-of-the box approaches, and these are absolutely shut down in most modern educational contexts (as an aside, if you research the history of why the modern educational context is structured the way it is, it has a lot to do with how to produce good factory workers..ugh!).

There’s lots of ways to cultivate curiosity in your life—here are a few suggestions:

• Asking good questions and seeking answers.  It is good to experience the world with a curious framework—to ask questions about the world.  For me, a lot of the ways that I cultivate curiosity are through trying to understand nature better: what is this plant? Why is this mushroom exuding liquid beneath the cap? What is the life cycle of this insect?
• Divergent thinking and mindsets. A hallmark of curiosity and creativity is divergent thinking—this is a thought process where you take a problem at hand and then work to generate and explore as many different solutions as possible. The goal of this is to be free, unstructured, and allow for no limitations.
• Seek novelty and new experiences.  Another part of a curious mentality is to regularly experience new things in the world: talk to people who have different views, seek out new experiences (even those local at home), try anything once.  Use these to develop a more curious mindset about the world.

Play and Unstructured Time

As children, we play all the time.  It’s generally something that all children do, if they are left to their own choices and not forced into brutal education systems that strip them of their wonder, curiosity, and joy.  Play is unstructured and play has no end goals or purpose.  I think one of the things that happens to us as we grow up in Western societies is that the weight of being an adult, of all the responsibilities and people we carry, really gets to us.  We don’t have time for anything but work or caretaking. We don’t have time to play.  We are taught that play is a waste of time, that it doesn’t bring in income, and that therefore, we should be serious and focus on more important matters.

I catch myself falling into the lure of productivity—even on days when I don’t have anything specific to do, I start at the beginning of the day by making a list in my head.  I’ll do this for 3 hours, then I’ll do this, and then this.  And before the sun is even above the mountains, my entire day is planned with a lot of things that I could probably do on a different day.  While that makes me very productive, it also squeezes out the opportunity to simply play and experience the unexpected.

To counter this, I now create space for play and unstructured time—just to see where things go.  I especially like going into nature for this—just taking a few hours to experience whatever it is the world has to offer.  To play, to have joy, and to be present in the land and with the spirits of the land.   I also like to take the major holidays in the druid tradition (the eight-fold wheel) as unstructured days for play, ceremony, and simply connecting with nature.

I also have a friend with three amazing kids who are being unschooled.  I’ve known them for almost 10 years and have watched them get older and grow into amazing creative people, and I try to make it a point to play with them regularly.  We build cabins in the woods, we share our superhero powers, swim in the pond, and get into mud fights.  It is awesome and I love every minute of it. My suggestion here is that if you can spend some time with kids just playing, it can be so joyful.  And they generally like having a fun adult around who can do some heavy lifting on cabin builds, lol!

Playful Interactions with Animals

As my opening story shared, spending time each day with animals is an important part of cultivating whimsy and enchantment.  As you get to know the local non-human people of the land, you can learn a great deal from them. This year, I have been cultivating a beautiful relationship with a catbird, who I call Caddell.  Caddell sings outside my window each morning, serenading the sun.  I come out and in my morning meditations, he is always in the trees nearby.  I pull out a flute and play some notes, and then he comes and sings.  I know that anytime I got out on the land, if I pulled out my flute, Caddell would come and we could perform a duet.  Sometimes if he sees me out in the garden, he will come and serenade me while I work.  This has been going on for months and it is so magical.  If I hadn’t paying attention closely, I would have missed how Caddell was finding me and singing for me. These are the kinds of things that bring so much joy and whimsy.

I also feel like animals are ready to offer us deep lessons of the earth.  Our five geese, for example, continue to teach me to live in the moment and to enjoy nothing more than some grapes and grass.  They snuggle and cuddle with me, we honk and fly together, and we enjoy each other’s company.  My time with the geese is uplifting and peaceful, and they are always glad to see me and accept me as a part-time member of the goose flock.

But also, it is important to recognize that animals are people too. Modern culture likes to pretend that humans are the only ones with desires, emotions, and personality, but well, that’s just bull.  All living beings have their own desires, personalities, needs, and joy. They can offer deep friendship, provide a lot of fun, and you can build interesting connections, relationships, and even deep friendships with them.

As I grew deeper into my own animist practice, seeing all living beings as people (and referring to them as such) helped me deepen my sense of enchantment and whimsy about the world.  Now, I make it a point to interact with them as people—with names, stories, and their own thing they are doing.  The animals that live here on our land—both domestic and wild—all have names and we interact with them just as we would any other person. There are many strong personalities on the land and it is a cast of characters with an ever-evolving plot!

Joy in Simple Things and Simple Living

In an age where we are constantly harassed to buy more, consume more, and spend more, there is a real joy and whimsy in taking an opposite approach—in simple living, in finding joy in our relationships with the world and in our own creative gifts, and in trying not to consume too much of what society is throwing down. I think it can be useful to work to live within simple means, with what you have, and not be chasing the next product that won’t make your life any better.  Shifting your emphasis away from the material

Deepening Relationships with Nature and Intuition

Part of a whimsical life is learning how to really connect deeply to nature both on the inner and outer levels.  This includes things like cultivating a strong intuition and following your intuition, it is also in things like developing more robust observation skills for the world around you.  But it’s also about learning how to communicate with nature—both physically and metaphysically. These skills are part of every human’s birthright and allow us to connect deeply and experience the full wonder of the world. Part of this is taking enough time to do this well–not here or there, but dedicated time to be in relationship with nature.

Significantly Limiting Media and Materialism

Let’s not make any mistake that there are two paradigms vying for our attention: the gentle voice of the living earth and spirit vs. the colonialist, capitalist machine of progress that wants us to consume to the death of everything else. Modern media is generally not in the first camp and nearly all of it is based on trying to get you to buy some shit and spend money.

I have personally found that the more social media, current movies, music, and other things I consume, the more hollow I feel inside.  The more I feel the claws of the machine grasping at my attention, my resources, and my spirit.  The machine makes me feel numb and sad, and it impacts my ability to be connected to everything else.  While social media is addictive, it is just like any other drug—you get a temporary pleasure but then the long-term effects are harmful. I work to limit my consumption particularly of social media and of TV/Movies—social media has very well-known problems with rewriting our brain chemistry (and I don’t have to rehash those here).  I find that most modern TV and movies have such a dark energy—they are unnecessarily violent, dark and just not what I want to bring into my life (I will point here to one of my favorite novels, The Handmaid’s Tale, vs. the TV series, which I could not stomach even one episode).

One of the other things I do is detoxification.  Twice a year I put the blog on hiatus and stay off social media—and I cultivate whimsy.  I do a yearly “Going dark” (dark refers to me turning off all my media and even a lot of modern electricity) and just doing a 10-day spiritual retreat in the darkest and coldest time of year.  That retreat is so renewing and rewarding. Other friends I know put hard limits on the stuff or remove it entirely from their phones, etc.  I think limits in this case are a good thing and help us connect back with the things that are really important: the world of nature!

Creating a Sense of Enchantment: Believing in Magic and the Spirit in all Things

A big part of this is cultivating an enchanted worldview.  I think there are lots of ways you might go about this. For me, as an animist bioregional druid, that is found in my relationships to all the beings around me: animals, trees, plants, insects, stones, rivers, mountains, and so on. By reconnecting to the living earth, by acknowledging and interacting in a whimsical world of spirits, and by seeing the incredible magic woven into our beautiful earth, I can bring whimsy and joy in my life.

Creative Practices

Creativity itself can be very whimsical and connected—allowing us to use our hands, minds, and bodies to connect with inspiration. I have found that it can be very rewarding to approach a creative practice with an open whimsy, again, not necessarily trying to accomplish a specific goal but rather allowing yourself to flow in whatever directions the Awen takes you.  As an artist, I find that I am balancing my work on long-term projects with open and unstructured experiences and adventures.  For me, I find that all three of my major creative disciplines (writing, music, and art) lend themselves more to open, unstructured, and free play and that they benefit from it. For writing it is at the idea stage, walking around the world and being inspired and having the spirits share with me their ideas for things they want to get into the world.  Then I hunker down and get it written. Or in art, sometimes I have a plan and sometimes I just go in the studio and see what strikes my fancy.  I do have long-term projects I am working on (decks, etc.) but those are always benefited by open play. Other times I go out in the yard with big pieces of paper and paint and see what happens.  I love just opening myself up to possibilities.  Music to me is the most free—I have no desire to put it out there in the world for other humans, but rather, its something I use as part of my land healing and spiritual practice, so that’s much more open and whimsical always.  It might be that you have some creative disciplines that are more structured and others that can be more whimsical.  Or, re-see the way you do something and try something different or outlandish—you might be glad you did!

Conclusion

I’m so glad I wrote about this—my spirit is uplifted just thinking about all the whimsy we can all bring into the world today.  Living in the age of the Anthropocene is a heavy burden for those who practice nature-based spiritual paths and who hold nature in reverence. These kinds of practices are a balm to the spirit and give us meaning and joy!  After working towards whimsy for a number of years, I also realize how bland and awful the world that many people live in–a disenchanted world full of hard edges and hard experiences…I’d take living whimsically any day over the alternative!

I would love to hear from you about your own practices—how do you bring in whimsy, joy, and enchantment into the everyday? What are your stories of whimsy?  Please share!