I met a lady on the beach this morning who said to me -” There’s a tsunami coming.”
“Right” I said – not really believing her of course – I mean – come on – here in Australia – nah…..
Well actually- yeah…. There was an earthquake in Chile – a realignment of the earths plates.
Its a strange sensation to be sitting here in my usual Sunday morning cafe – right on the beach , knowing that several thousand miles away there is a wave racing across the ocean towards me at the speed of 7 hundred kilometers an hour.. That’s faster than the plane I catch to New Zealand when I go back to visit!
The tide is already very high this morning. The forces of nature are creators of immense, uncontrollable energies- that often rearrange our lives on a massive scale. How we deal with these events is a measure of who we are at our core. It can be a time of opportunity to re-align ourselves and re-create our lives anew in a fashion that is more pleasing to us, or a tragedy to continually lament over, a reason to stay stuck the rest of our days. Which path would you take?
I met a lady on a train once whose house had burnt to the ground in the midst of renovations. They were lucky to escape with their lives. They lost everything in that fire except the clothes they were wearing. She told me that this ‘tragedy’ caused her and her partner to totally re-evaluate their lives. They both changed careers and are now doing something they love thats in alignment with their own creative genius. She began an art degree and is now doing her masters and I think he became a lawyer.
A baby takes a step and falls down – not just once or twice but over and over again.
Do we yell and rail at this little person? No. Quite the contrary – we smile, we encourage we laugh delightedly.
When does our love affair with creative endeavor turn sour I wonder? Why is it do you think that we don’t offer the same gift to ourselves as we learn something new, or “fail” in an attempt to be perfect?
Look at this picture of my granddaughter Grace. Notice the look of absolute delight on her face as she is fully immersed in her creative moment. I think we can learn a lot from children…..
Where is it, or when is it no longer OK to make mistakes as we learn to grow? When is it that we stop celebrating each little success and misstep along the way?
Why is it that my students want to judge themselves as failures for not producing the perfect painting on their first attempt? Why is it that they only focus on the mistakes and how ‘bad’ it is?
Not only that, why is it that after creating more than 80 art works – I still do the same thing? In fact I think the Inner Critic gets louder and more demanding the older we get. It refuses to allow us to begin at the beginning of something , demanding a level of expertize that we clearly don’t have and criticizing very loudly when we don’t live up to those impossible expectations.
What if, the next time you feel you have failed at something – how would it be to stop – smile to yourself – and celebrate the fact that you tried something! There are no mistakes. Love your attempts – every one brings you closer to what you are trying to achieve.
One area we often trip up as creators is to think what we do is no good because we compare it to what others are creating. So here is the ultimate in comparisons for you.
Is there really such a thing as the Ultimate Creation? Well when you stack everything else next to the creation in this video – I think I’d have to say yes.
Here is creation on such a vast scale that the mind can barely encompass it – Charles and Ray Eames take us on a journey from the atom to the edge of the universe. I can’t think of any human achievement that surpasses the immensity and beauty of what they are representing in this video – can you?
So I guess you might as well say we just need to get over ourselves and get on with what we can do. Comparing ourselves to others is probably the worst thing we can do. So compared to the creator of worlds, you know what, we can never measure up in that arena. As Oscar Wilde said ‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.’
For a long time this amazing woman has been a major artistic influence in my life. Not only do I love her paintings but I also admire her immense courage. She dared to walk her own path, to live HER life. She was able to step into her own vision. How fortunate for us that she did – filling the world with a new perspective, embodied in beautiful art works.
