School

this is what I experienced in school when we did art class. Here is a project now do it now lets see how yours stacks up to mine and everyone elses work. You can draw or you cannot draw, Oh you are an artist and you are not.,
Grade one.
you are 6 years old and your artistic expression is decided for you..
This is against everything that is creative in life.
You do art to enhance that part of your life and the big question is how does one do that.
When I was 6 the rage inside me had begun. By some fortunate stroke my first grade teacher thought I was a good artist and that was that. Who knows why she said that when I knew nothing.
But what she did not tell me was what to do with all this energy that I had to be creative. Without an outlet a creative personality will go crazy. Literally.
Sometimes the crazy looks like anger, sometimes it looks like temper tantrums. sometimes it looks like a bad child.
In my art class I will attempt to teach the children how to channel that energy in a positive way. Make the rage into a raging river on a canvas. Make the tantrum turn into a mural. You have to spend that creative energy or it will spend you.
Believe me I wish someone had shown me at a very young age what to do with the storm of energy in me.
I also have seen the result of a quiet child being quiet because he was thinking. You can think things out better through art.
Art can be your lifeline .
All I know is a lot of years of working as an artist.
I could have done so much more if I started earlier.

The end of the year

The great thing about the end of all things is that it is the beginning of the new thing.
Have you ever noticed how good it feels to clean up the house after Christmas and get on with the new year.
the end is always the most hopeful. We think well that is that.
That is the show, that is the year, that is my life.
Till we get to the last one of those we always can start again.
I have been listening to Mere Christianity on you tube. There is something comforting in C. S, Lewis’ voice. He calmly says what we all have thought one way or another.
He merely states the end of all the conclusions you might have thought of.
All the possibilities, wishes, hoping, assuming but never really examining.
Dear reader it is my greatest wish for you to consider this. In the end of it all, what does it matter what we have accomplished in this world if there is even the remotest possibility that there indeed after this life a new one that we must live. And if there is even the remotest possibility that there is Someone we must give an account to , because in the end if there is a new beginning then what will it be for you.

Options

In the army, they do not give you options to do what you want. I was thinking how freeing that is in a way.
We give ourselves options to do lots of things that we really should not.
We say Oh I will do this today but then again I have the option not to. So do you think that thing gets done. NO!
Options just are another word for procrastination.
Life goes better with few options.
I like how the army gives you no options about keeping your room clean. zero options. You do it they scream at you and maybe even kick you out. Even if you were messy before you learn real quick to not be messy anymore.
We give ourselves options to fail.
If this does not work out I can always bail out. Yup. options are also another word for not trying hard enough.
The more I ponder it I think the fewer the options you give yourself the better you will be.
We eliminate a lot of stress by having no choice about matters that count. marriage. passing a test, getting fat, being lazy etc. I am sure you can think of a thing or two that would be great to have no options about.
The pioneers were not people of a lot of options. Live or die was pretty much the only one they got. Even if it was so so so hard they did not turn back and say “Hey I did not count on all this pain involved with moving across country in a cruddy wooden wheeled  trailer going over horrible non roads and all these people trying to kill me not to mention all the dirt and where oh where is a bathtub. I really was not thinking how cold is cold with only canvas for a house. NO this is not what I planned for.
They said.l” We go forward or we die.”
No options.
I don’t even know what grueling means.They did.
Wouldn’t you like to see how it would be if they came back in this time and saw us quitting over such a minimal amount of pain. Don’t you think they would think we were the weakest of all Gods creatures.
NO options equals good!

The Fog

This morning the fog was so heavy it was hard to see more than 10 feet in front of the car. Yet we have to drive down the road not knowing what is coming at the car.
Everyone has the same experience in life. You can only see a few seconds down the road really.
You can plan and plan but you won’t see all the variables till you get in that time where you see what your choices have played out. You can’t see that fire coming, you can’t see that car wreck before you are in it, you can’t stop your leg from breaking when you fall in front of your house,
anything bad can happen or anything good. You did not know that stranger was going to come in today and want you to do a lot of work for them.
You did not know that the sun would come out first and melt the ice so that you do not fall in front of your house. I could go on.
Worry is totally useless at all times.

There is nothing you can do about it. Do not look back and say oh I should have done this or that.
It doesn’t matter.
If one thing goes bad it might be a wonderful change that you could have not seen in a million years. You did not know you would be happy in a new place.
My dogs don’t worry about anything. They could not care less about what tomorrow holds. All they know is I will feed them and walk them and pet them and they are totally happy today.
We need to be more trusting that whatever is next will be just that what happens next and not the end of the world.
Unless it is the literal end of the world but that is another thought for another day.

Learning the Hard Way

A friend of mine once told me that there were two ways to learn something/ Listen or Pain.
I would say that 90 percent of the time we choose pain because we do not believe what someone else tells us.
We think to ourselves that they don’t know all the facts like we do.
It is easy to see the red flags once you are past the initial choice. That is because we are not all emotional about it anymore. It seems as plain as the nose on your face.
If everyone else is doing something that makes us think it must be ok too. We think well everybody cant be wrong.
But they can.
This morning I am thinking of the many times people have told me something and I immediately forgot it.
Then it comes back to haunt me after I see what resulted from me ignoring the advice.
If someone tells you something,, write it down and think about it. Don’t just disregard it. People don’t offer advice unless they see something that you might be missing.
If you hear the same thing over and over. There is a reason for that.
You don’t know everything. Especially about yourself. remember listen or pain.

error: Please do not copy.