When I was young, and spending hours escaping into drawing, art to me was escape. It was crafting my own version of what I wanted to be, what I wanted to see, how I wanted to look, and what I wanted to look at. As I grew older, and raised a family, it all changed. What I saw wasn’t anywhere near as important as the family. What I wanted wasn’t important. What I wanted to see wasn’t important. What I was interested in didn’t seem to matter one bit.
There’s something about having a family, raising kids, that expands ones vision, makes the “I” so much smaller, makes the needs and wants of others so much more important. It’s a growth experience for the parents, much more than even for the children. You discover not just the word, humility, but the meaning. You internalize it, and it becomes a part of you.
To truly care for others, to aid in their growth, to bring to others all the good you can find in you actually causes you to do just that, find good in you. Create good in you. Makes you realize how really unimportant things like fashion, and socializing, and all the assortment of extraneous activities we think are so important when we are young. God is good. And His creation and all the wonders of it are so much more important than “I” and anything I wanted or desired as a youngster.
Now, I am so grateful for the birds singing in the morning when my dog takes me out for a short walk. The breeze in the trees, the shade they provide, and their incredible beauty I couldn’t even imagine capturing with paint. The squirrels playing and working so hard for a bit of birdseed, the foxes that still come for breakfast!
The smell of coffee brewing, bacon cooking, the feeling of the comfy socks and shoes on my old achy feet, the cat I have to shoo off the keyboard and mouse…. these are the things of life that I have now. The wonderful guy who has always provided for me for 60 years, and what do I feed him today!
You can draw pictures….or if a reader, like I am, you can find and see all sorts of magic and beauty in the written word. There’s nothing like a good book that is so well crafted you can smell the setting, feel the breezes blowing, hear the birds all just because a great writer can paint much better pictures than I can, but with words that capture your very essence for a few days and take you from troubles to somewhere else. Not just for an hour of someone else’s images, but for days of your very own. Nothing like the inside of your own eyelids! Really.
Writing, a greater art than drawing or painting, and music, now music is the ultimate. Takes your soul and makes it dance, or float, or it can caress and soothe, depending on instrumentation, tempo, tune, rhythm. Ah, yes. So much better than just a drawing.