Rock, Scissors, Paper and Flow

In Wilma Flintstone style, I sat at my kitchen table clipping coupons from a flyer that recently arrived in the mail. I couldn’t resist.  I still love a good coupon!  And did I mention they were made of paper?

As I sat at my table clipping away, I was reminded of an earlier time in my life when I thought I was a big help by clipping coupons from the newspapers and magazines that came into our household.  That was for my busy mother’s sake. For myself, I remember cutting out paper dolls and their paper wardrobes, proceeding ever so slowly and carefully, trying not to nip the tiny tabs that would hold the clothes to the paper doll.   It was a task for which those babyfied, round-edged scissors would not do.  Creating a wardrobe was a task more akin to surgery and required the slender blades and sharp tips of grown-up scissors.  Patience and focus were as much of a requirement as the scissors.  I held my breath and bit my lip as I turned the paper this way and that to get around all of the curves.  When done, I exhaled and felt the intense satisfaction one gets from doing detailed work that requires complete concentration.  Later, psychologists would study that state I was in and call it flow.

These reflections on paper cutting caused me to think of a man I once knew.  He was coming to the end of his life and was receiving home hospice care.  While he could still move about his home, he didn’t have much energy for getting out of the house.  One of the things he still enjoyed was sitting on his beautiful screened-in back porch with a stack of newspapers and flyers and clipping the coupons.  Family members, neighbors and friends would bring their flyers and newspapers to the man, and he would clip the coupons and organize them for everyone.  He felt useful and it made him happy, but the happiness was not just about being useful, it was also about the joy that detailed, attentive work can bring.  And what could be more satisfying for a man who was running out of time than to have those hours each day when time stood still?

The famous French artist Henri Matisse understood this long before psychologists began to study flow. He was a visual artist best known as a painter throughout most of his career.  He died in 1954, but in the last ten years of his life, Matisse found himself between a rock and hard place.  With vision fading and diagnosed with an abdominal cancer that left him bedridden and reliant upon a wheelchair, Matisse could no longer paint and sculpt as he had throughout his career.  And so, he picked up a pair of scissors and got to work cutting paper.    While many of us spend the last years of our lives thinking about what we can cut out, Matisse gave the words “cut-out” new meaning.  He spent his last decade busy painting with scissors and continued to create beautiful and lasting works of art.

So, if you are feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place, grab some scissors and some paper and go with the flow!  Maybe coupon clipping will be the next great movement in art!  Who knows?  I may run into you when our works go on display at The Guggenheim.  (And I promise not to run with scissors!)