This weekend I thought of my decision to not decide to be any one thing. I asked myself if it was because I was afraid of stability, being boring, being normal, being pidgeonholed.....I mentioned this question in an earlier blog. The answer was and is no. But then a new question came to mind....Do I not choose one career to follow because if I never choose then I can't fail at any? In other words, am I participating in self-sabotage....am I acting completely out of fear. I didn't even want to admit that this question came to mind for fear it might be true.
(At my party of Friday a girl said after looking around my place,"I know you're an artist but I can't tell what kind.")
Here was my retort to myself....If my daily goal, the goal that I have moment to moment in my life (which I value more) is to find joy and peace, then I can never fail, no matter what I do. And that is out of love.
So then this decision to not decide, well, it's not a big deal as long as I am making the moment to moment decisions that bring about Love, joy.
Here's the problem...fear is easier to fall into than love,unfortunately. Everything in this world is made to die, to deteriorate. We have to work at living, at loving, and going. So, it is easy to fall into the fear of failing, of not choosing, and forgetting the process of loving. Leading to a standstill or a retrogression. Which is a place I think I go to sometimes, those days that I am overwhelmed with the question "what am I doing with my life?"
Is it possible to "not choose" out of love? Isn't it true that sometimes we "choose" out of fear. Afterall, I have always said, being an artist is one of the few careers one must choose to be on a day to day basis, because it is not an easy road, or an easy career to fall into. On the other hand, years pass before a surgeon realizes she accidentally became her profession, because the steps she took were the ones she was supposed to take, or the safe way, or what others wanted for her.
I am choosing a tough life. But what a blessing! How much more joyous are joys when we have something to measure them up against.
The newest joy of my life...my new niece Olivia.
Olivia: Why, what would you?
Cesario: Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house,
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night.
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossips of the air
Cry out Olivia!
-Twelfth Night, Shakespeare
1 comment:
1000 possibilities.
You choose one.
999 go to waste.
Cruel life. But life.
1000 possibilities.
You choose not to choose.
1000 possibilities.
Waiting. No life.
"The fate he had been marked for he had met with a vengeance - he had emptied the cup to the lees: he had been the man of his time, the man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened...
It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion..."
(Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle)
If you're an artist - no way out.
You MUST choose.
Hawk
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