Becoming More

I've been talking with my good friend about life and the condition of the human heart. It's a topic on my mind a lot these days. At once, life is good and deep and wonderful. And then at once, it's disappointing and profoundly shallow and boring and downright unbearable.

Sometimes, I wake up to observe the way I am. The way we all are. The way life is. The way relationships are and wonder ... how did I get on this auto-pilot mode of being? How did life get so uninteresting?

Maybe my questions are a bit self-indulgent but I'm not sure that I'm alone. I mean, have you really paid attention to the lyrics of the songs that we all know by heart? For the most part, they're much about heartache, angst, and disappointment. The movies are filled with these themes too. It's in many ways, the universal condition of the heart.

So my friend has challenged me. The challenge is not to wallow in the disappointment of it all. The challenge is to step up my game. To continue to challenge myself. To continue to reinvent myself. To learn more. To do more. To seek out new experiences, new opportunities, so that I can turn off auto-pilot mode in every part of my life and actually fly the plane and fly it well.

To make good art. To take a deep breath and bravely dive deep to observe and to learn and then come back up to catch my breath and make even better art. To be bold and put colors of paint down that I usually don't put down in ways that I don't put it down, and see where it goes. In other words, to combat the disappointments of life not through a pity party, but through becoming more.

 

Comments

[Ellen]

We all need friends like this! Yes, I love those that embrace us, but we also need friends to challenge n' push us~ Life moves when we are shoved, tugged n' pulled in new directions~
The heart has its own compass, but friends can point us in NN.
New North ;D Now point your brush towards the new horizon~