Lakeshore East Article

I was recently asked to write an article for the Lakeshore east journal.  It was meant to be light hearted enough for a short entry but a piece that could also speak to the universal notion of the way that we live our lives! 

Hope you enjoy

The Art of Living

by Sarah Raskey MA LCPC ATR 

Each of our lives is filled with funny possibilities, miracles and malfunctions, gardens and graveyards…and since the universe apparently has a sense of humor, all of these things can even be experienced in the same afternoon. So how do we remain present and make the most out of our time here in the midst of all of life’s distractions?

I have been an Art Therapist/Psychotherapist for the past 6 years; I have been an artist since I was old enough to “borrow” my mother’s lipstick to create a two foot tall wall mural scrawled across my bedroom (picture Chanel meets graffiti art), and I have been a fledgling human being for as long as I can remember.

Every day I work with people who are looking for answers, looking to make sense out of their life and their story. Beyond the office walls I also find that most people are in search of how to exist meaningfully within the great mystery of it all. So it is no wonder why every now and again we have moments that look/feel a lot like we just found ourselves wondering how we woke up in the trunk of a car…as if we have no idea what we are doing here…how we got here...or  how to be here.

From the time we are small we are taught to develop faiths and morals, and string together what we believe to be truths as a way of forming a compass, one that will help us do this whole being human thing the “right way.”  Of course, the notion of fate and destiny within the context of our life is all too complex to dive into in this article. However, I do believe that they are held together by a few basic fundamentals as to "how to be here."  I refer to these basic fundamentals as “the art of living.”

In many ways it is the art of being present in our lives. It is about seizing every opportunity to feel alive; to participate and engage in all that is around us because all of it is a gift and an opportunity to learn.  The art of living is talking to perfect strangers daily because we can embrace them as part of our extended family, or taking the extra two minutes to really look closely at the way the clouds form right before a magnificent thunder and lightening storm. It’s laughing at ourselves out loud when we have missed the last step (again), which results in a quest for Neosporin. It is our ability to risk making mistakes so that we may live in the moment because we do not believe in missing out on the brilliance and ridiculousness of life’s offerings just to protect our egos.  It is the knowing that there every day can hold an adventure, a seeking, and an exploring... so that we may become inspired by all of the “mini miracles” going on all around us.

I would like to think of it all this way; even when we ride a bike we have choices to make. If we keep our eyes only straight ahead with a tight grip on the handlebars, it is likely that we will avoid a great fall. However, we would likely not notice the way the sun’s light comes drifting magically through the vines of our favorite weeping willow tree. The truth is that we don't always know exactly where we are riding our bike to, or maybe we do but we have no idea what we will do when we get there or why we are going in the first place... but if we focus on the "art of living"...we can at the very least enjoy our trip. 


Life has a creative way of opening up to us in moments, as if it knows that it can reach us in chapters through stories only we can write. Sometimes life becomes overwhelming and hard and we forget that we have the freedom to practice the art of living.  Sometimes our moments will make us smile and other times we will get a few bruises from them. This is to know the art of living. To love all moments equally as they come our way because they are all equally a part of our story and our journey...but mostly to remember that they are all are all an opportunity to find meaning and to make the very most of them.