I have spent the last couple of years finding my way through this new journey of getting back to Art and starting to make it my life. In this process I am realising that not only in life, but in Art, in business, on websites, social media…. everything, we are ever evolving and so what we are doing is also and has to.
My website for example, will have to keep updating and changing and molding along with where I am and what I am doing. My Art cannot stay the same or the same repetition of images without it halting the evolution of my development. This is not to say I cannot find a route that I love and run down it arms wide, but I must always keep stretching and allowing myself to evolve within that route.
Our life is not about end goals, these are simply guiding lights for our journey. But our life is this journey itself. Each step, each moment is life and what we are. If we miss this, if we forget to look around and pay attention then how will we know where we are or if we are happy with our choices?
In a random way to help me be ‘present’, I bought myself a scooter this week. Much to the amusement and eyebrow raising of my husband! Not only does it allow me to fly down the paths locally with my children, keeping up with them and joining in with their fun, but it lets me be the ‘silly’ side of myself that I love.
I recently read a wonderful book about storytelling and healing (‘Healing Stories’ Susan Perrow, Hawthorne Press). In this book Perrow talks of the movement into adulthood being a loss. A loss of imagination, of creativity that children have within them so acutely. Along with the responsibilities of adulthood we also feel the pressure of socialisation, the exposure to and enforced learning of the social norms of our society. There are expectations of adults, of behaviour, of social groups, and if we step out of these we are often given an excuse…… he’s drunk, having a ‘crisis’, wanting attention, ‘playing the fool’….
But what if in growing up we all continued to explore our adventurous or creative or playful sides? Why, for some of us, does it have to take being around children for us to remember and feel free to let go again. I am certainly aware that many of my friends feel free enough to be themselves, whether this involves ‘playing’ or not. And also, ‘my’ vision of what this freedom is, is my own interpretation. But I watched recently as a local tree surgeon scaled a huge tree and swung from the branches…. I have to believe that he loved it!
Is the search for adrenaline kicks from the same internal source? Wanting to feel the same freedom? I am sure it is.
So…. I’m going to allow myself this freedom as I often have, but without excuses or rationale. Just because I find it fun. I will swing high on a swing, scooter until I am breathless, climb a tree (and get stuck as I always did as a child), run in the garden just for the sake of it, lie on the ground and cloud gaze and remind my children that growing up doesn’t have to mean stopping playing or dreaming.
……..does it?
Happy wonderings.
Susan xxxx