We live in an age of intense sensory overload. If we let it, we can be inundated constantly, constant images, constant sound, constant news, constant. Distraction and overwhelm are not knew phenomena to the human experience, and yet it does feel that our contemporary context has a particularly intense experience of these. It is so easy to tap out on engaging with life, with the world, with the real. So easy to say no to relationships, to unexpected wonders, to the ordinary everyday encounters. The ease in which we can tap out and say no to these things can leave us feeling trapped, isolated, without meaning, anxiety flooding us. 

Join the Collegium Institute for it’s spring Ars Vivendi Arts Initiative conversation as we welcome writer, Shemaiah Gonzalez, author of Undaunted Joy: The Revolutionary Act of Cultivating Delight. In this evening conversation we’ll explore how we can carve our space for silence amidst the noise, find rhythm and pattern instead of the chaos of doom scrolling, how we can cultivate joy instead of anxiety? Ultimately we’ll explore how pausing and choosing to craft a life with space for joy and wonder and delight, what we might call an artful life, can do what Picasso claimed was art’s role: to” wash away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” 

Date: Monday, March 16th, 5-6:30pm

Location: Penn Newman Center (111 S. 38th St, University City Philadelphia)

Click the button below to RSVP. Please direct any questions to Jess Sweeney (jsweeney@collegiuminstitute.org).