Max Gill
When approached about writing a piece for our floral community from a different light, my interest piqued despite my reservations about my writing. When I read the suggested topic was “letting go” and open to interpretation, I knew I had to overcome my fears and rise to the occasion, as it is a subject I’ve given a lot of thought to lately.
If I’m honest, it’s something I’ve never been very good at - in the short term, anyway. Actually, I take that back - I am well versed at coming to terms with life’s disappointments: be it not getting a job I bid on, having some dream dashed or realizing a material goal is inarguably beyond my reach, or being anything but last picked for dodge ball. I have mastered that variation on the theme.
But the kind of letting go preoccupying me these days relates to the letting go of some aspect of my personality that no longer serves me; to being free of some outmoded habit of mind or defect of character. This skill has always been illusive. Overcoming such shortcomings has been represented best by a slow, incremental (and often painful) process, leading me to believe I just wasn't doing it right.
As a matter of fact, it’s more often been my experience that the feelings gets worse for my efforts. The harder I try to remedy some unwanted emotional state of mind the more ingrained it seems to become. Furthermore, after the pattern has repeated enough times, I’ve found I start to identify with these habitual hallmarks; eventually internalizing them as if they are some defining commentary on my essential nature. Worst case, they ultimately start to shape my core beliefs about myself and what’s possible for me in my life.
Nowhere has this been more apparent than when it comes to my creative process, and that has been to a debilitating degree when it comes to social media (or any other time the stakes feel particularly high). During these times, such emotions seem more like liabilities, distracting me from the real work at hand. Letting go has always seemed the ultimate fix.
Consider, for example, fear. Suppose you’re, I don’t know, invited to write a short essay for an audience of your contemporaries. As you sit down to begin, fear starts to well in the pit of your - ok, my - stomach. Fear of falling short and disappointing, of failing altogether, of being judged and talked about by the very people I'm hoping to impress most all enter my mind as real probabilities. Attempts to let the unwelcome thoughts and feelings go seem futile and are subsequently compounded by the expectation that if I have done so effectively, the fear should have somehow magically dissipated and I should be able to proceed with my writing fear free. That there is nothing I seem to be able to do to resolve this problem brings an added dimension to my distress. This escalates, more than once, to an anxious lather over these few paragraphs until a sort of paralysis sets in and I’m capable of little more than staring blankly at the computer, blinking occasionally.
I can draw from a lifetime of experience demonstrating this tendency; supporting the conclusion that I am just an anxious person. To be sure, I have devoted the better part of my life to battling anxiety and patterned panic attacks. I have assembled a healthy library of self help books, clocked countless hours in therapy, and tried more than one pharmaceutical regimen in search of the antidote. I could offer examples of sadness, despair, jealously, regret and anger following similar trajectories no matter how hard I tried to let them go.
More recently, I’ve begun to wonder if these patterns might not serve some purpose. What if these states of mind have something to offer, some utility beyond the discomfort? It could be argued personal growth often follows major disruptions and sometimes even relies on them. Challenging times may have inherent to them some lesson. What if doing away with them all together would actually be a disservice to myself and my fellows; if letting them go would leave me at a deficit? My mind goes to gardening metaphors. In the natural world, death and decay are necessary to the process of fertilization and rebirth. The flow of all things from their old form into a new one requires regeneration down to the cellular level. Letting go might be like throwing perfectly good compostables in the landfill can.
From that vantage, it’s not hard to imagine there being a relationship between these unpalatable mental models and their more desirable opposing counterparts: fear and courage, sadness and joy, despair and hope, jealousy and inspiration, regret and closure, anger and love. As a matter of fact, I believe each of these compliments to be very intimately connected. There is a certain symbiosis between them. At the very least, adversity deepens my appreciation of the gentler, more forgiving times. But, more than that, I’ve found real benefit in leaning into the feelings I would have tried to let go of in the past. Moving through the former tends to lead me to a new, broader understanding of the latter and ultimately of myself. Emotions I initially see as negative can add richness to my experience overall bringing me into closer alignment with my own process, my truest needs, my most authentic self as cliche as that might sound.
The sooner I can find acceptance of and adopt a curiosity about a particularly uncomfortable dynamic, observing it without taking it too personally, the faster it seems to run its course. I’ll return to my earlier example of fear. Now sentences away from being finished, having found the willingness to sit down at the computer alongside my doubts time and time again, I approach the completion of my essay with a renewed sense of what I have to offer, more assured for my accomplishment, and really quite grateful for the opportunity the fear afforded me.
These days my goal is to work with the feeling; to cultivate a more holistic approach in my response to difficulty - a sort of emotional permaculture, if you will. I have a growing awareness of the potential value in all the parts of the "system", even the less tidy ones. I find it comforting to believe they contribute something to a much bigger, much more comprehensive whole, though what that is exactly might remain beyond my limited perception.
The seed of the new may very well be present in the shell of the old - even if I never get to enjoy the fruit directly ( I promise that’s the last gardening metaphor). With nothing to fix, no cure to find, no conclusions to come to about what feeling some kind of way means about me, I aspire to proceed in profound respect for the process ahead. So now, not as tempted by the idea of letting go of a given feeling, I like to think in terms of letting it be.
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My work is always botanically inspired. What I find most compelling in nature is when plants are struggling to find their place in the environment. As they fight to overcome the challenges of space and light, often surprising us with their juxtaposition, they create beauty through adaptation.”
After receiving his degree in Environmental Science from UC Berkeley, Max Gill was compelled by more creative pursuits, eventually finding floral design the perfect medium as it seemed to him to draw from all of his greatest passions: gardening, sculpture, painting and art and theater history.
Originally from upstate New York, Max has called the Bay Area home for almost 35 years. Perhaps best known for his work at Chez Panisse where he has done the flowers for over a decade, Max started Max Gill Design in 2005 and now offers full floral services for weddings, special events and private clients such as Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and Lauren McIntosh.
Informed by natural process, Max’s work is distinguished by his reliance on specialty blooms and botanical rarities gleaned from local growers, his own formidable cut flower garden in North Berkeley, and a long list of bay area nurseries.