Creating Reality
I have been imagining impossible ideas for last ninety nine days. Every morning I would imagine something about myself, something about life, something about God. Today’s impossible idea was: “we enjoy the company of people with whom we have nothing in common.”
This idea came up in response to the presidential election that is going on in Poland right now. There is one candidate in this election that would be quite controversial if anyone bothered to pay any attention to him. His ideas, observations and points are so outrageous, so offensive, so unacceptable to the Polish society, to the Polish culture, to the Polish way of being, that they go unheard and the man is dismissed as a ridiculous figure.
And yet his ideas really are valuable, his questions are often valid, his points and observations are quite progressive and important. But no one listens to him. [click to continue…]
I drew my face the other night. It’s not an easy task, not for me anyway. It was hard, frustrating, challenging and delightful. I stared at my face in the mirror, stared at what was supposed to be my face on the page, at lines, shapes, curves, shadows, highlights, at the marks my pencil made on paper.
I looked, and looked, and looked. And as I looked, thoughts were running through my mind. “What are you doing?!” they asked, “why are you wasting time on this? There is no value to this, you should be working now, doing something that will bring some money, stop goffing around!”.
I listened and thought: God, how brainwashed I am! How controlled! How well trained I must be to believe that nothing has value unless I can get money for it, that doing what I want, what feels right, what feels good, is a useless waste of time. Because I can’t sell it, because it won’t make me known, famous, important. [click to continue…]
Tuesday’s impossible idea: things that come easily and without effort are worth having, we don’t need to risk getting killed to get stronger, we don’t need privations to develop character, we don’t need to sacrifice to be good, we don’t need to suffer to appreciate happiness, we don’t need pain to grow, we don’t need frustration to change. We can have it all happily, joyously, and everything is perfect.
“Some people help others just to make themselves feel better than they really are.”
I read this sentence and thought: “helping others only to make yourself feel better is not a good thing. It is selfish, it’s cheating, manipulation. It is wrong to want something for yourself. The real, praiseworthy and honorable deed, is the one that does not benefit the doer, a deed that is truly altruistic.”
I know all this, and yet I could not restrain a shudder when I read this sentence. Some people help others just to make themselves feel better that they really are.
I am being myself lately, more than ever before. I am exploring my ways of being. I draw and I write and I make up stories and I begin to believe that I can do all that, only that, because I want to. Because I like to. Because when I wake up in a morning, knowing that I will draw a portrait I started the day before, and I ask myself: “if I were to die tomorrow, would I be drawing this portrait today?” my answer is: “O Yes! Yes, I would.” And that is a reason enough. [click to continue…]
