As a child I loved to draw. Feelings that couldn't be expressed in words flowed onto paper. Rocket ships, football players, jazz musicians, a whole world of emotional expression. Even the sensation of hand with pen connecting to paper was grounding and pleasurable. Then, Mother entered me in art contests, and my artistic ego was born. That trip took me all the way into a graduate school MFA program. There, I found I was not the best artist, and I didn't get the awards and assistantships. So I freaked out (as we said in 1967).
I turned to psychology and meditation to try to figure myself out. And in the process of healing my disappointment in the loss of my "great artist" dream, I discovered my Self. The whole world of words, of thinking, of communicating about feelings and philosophy opened up to me. Counseling and mentoring became an art form, a medium of creative expression far deeper and intimate than drawing and painting had been. The art became connecting to people directly through words, and nurturing people with encouraging talk and empathic insight, and arriving at understanding together through shared life experience.
We must express ourselves and connect with each other. Your art form is whatever you do with your whole heart, to the best of your ability, with all the beauty and power and finesse that is in you. And if your art is born out of your suffering, out of your healing, so much the better.
No comments:
Post a Comment