Today is my birthday. On this day I celebrate my birth. Lately I've been thinking about my birth. The fact that I exist and what it means. Being born is like winning the lottery. Only it's the greatest prize of them all, life. Think about it, as humans we start off as one of millions of spermatozoa that race towards a single egg. We complete against millions of other sperms racing wildly along a fallopian tube, no map, no sat navs, just an instinctive drive to be the first one to get to that egg. And we do. We get there and we are winners. We bore into the egg and we are conceived. Stop and think about that for a moment.
Before consciousness we have been able to instinctively go after what we want and achieve this and yet, somehow after all that enthusiasm, that without the right stimuli , once we are born, we seen to lose this drive. The problem, knowledge. To much knowledge is a dangerous thing. I so strongly agree. As we mature we learn about rights and wrongs, pain and pleasure, fear and courage. It is this knowledge that can help or hinder us throughout the rest of our lives. For most of us we travel along the path of least resistance never thoroughly realising our full potential. Little realising that it is the trials and tribulations that we bear in our lives that mould and shape us, like crucibles we are filled with potential but the fire of life burns hotly beneath us. For some the heat of the flames causes us to boil over, for others we melt and yet for others the heat challenges them so that the cream rises to the top.
I have always wanted to do something in the arts. Be a writer, a fine artist an interior designer. I had the talent but along the way it got corrupted. I was educated. I was taught the right way to paint, to hold a brush, to draw, to design, to think. Character arc, compositions, colour wheel, cubism, moderism, realism, high art, low art, on and on my education went until I had education coming out of my ears. Of course the inevitable happened with too much knowledge. I froze. I was paralyzed into inaction. Afraid to make a move least it not be the correct one, or "traditional" method, or meet with approval from the authorities on the subject. It is why I am now strongly against art education. I don't believe that art in whatever medium can or should be taught. It should evolve naturally in the artist hands and let new discoveries and new ways of doing emerge. Rules only serve to stagnate the mind. Now I am learning to unlearn the rules, learning not be concerned about what is right and what is wrong But instead trust in myself and just do it. I am reminded of a poem a friend recommended to me. I will reproduce it here and I hope it resonates within you as it did me for we are all in this together. For the non religious replace the word God with Potential. The message remains the same.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
This inspiring quote by Marianne Williamson is from her book, A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3 (Pg. 190-191).
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