Over the holidays, I received the most wonderful gift: some canvases, a few paintbrushes, and a set of beautifully pigmented acrylic paints! Having wanted these supplies for awhile, I was absolutely thrilled to put on my creative thinking cap and set forth towards my dusty, unused easel! After a few days of being distracted by my numerous other hobbies, tasks, and daydreams, I placed the canvas on my easel, unloaded my paints from the box, grabbed a paintbrush, and sat there staring at a blank canvas...overwhelmed and terrified. I tried brainstorming ideas for the canvas but just couldn't seem to come up with anything good enough for this perfectly ready, perfectly fresh canvas...was I not prepared? Should I just put it away and keep procrastinating until maybe I feel inspired another day???
Sitting there in thought, I soon got distracted by the realization that the whole artistic process is simply a metaphor for life. Every single day, we have to make decisions; some are big and pertinent to our life paths while others are small and meaningless. Often, we have no direction or simply feel unprepared to make the decision, so when we can, we just put it off and wait for the answer to come to us. Well, guess what. The likelihood that that will happen is about .00001% (at least from personal experience), so I don't recommend doing it. There will never be the "perfect time" to do something, and there will never be the "perfect choice" when deciding something because everything has pros and cons. However, procrastination in any form, whether it is putting off choosing your college or waiting to start those guitar lessons you've always to take because you're "too busy", is a choice in and of itself, and it's the wrong choice. It's the choice of inaction, the choice of stagnation. Instead, we have to make the decision to simply start, whether the start is signing up for those dang guitar lessons or painting a single line on a canvas.
I have found that once we start something, no matter the degree to which we actually know what we are doing, things seem to flow from there. You can think of yourself as a wind-up toy. The winding up is the hardest part. It takes some motivation, strength, and a bit of determination. However, once its wound up, the toy just keeps going without any fear of running into a wall or chair leg. If it does run into something, it may fall over, but we usually pick up the toy and set it right back on track, where it keeps moving along. I know it sounds silly, but we can find inspiration all around us, and in this case, we may just have to learn a little something from wind-up toys...
Well, I may have gone on a bit of a tangent there, but the main point is that we must never stop and never choose procrastination. Any action, right or wrong, is movement in a direction, and that's better than the alternative. So, after realizing all of this on that fine winter evening, I dipped my brush in some paint, put the brush to the canvas, and let the art flow.
Quote of the Day:
"You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Peace, Love, + Happiness,
Deviva