Another birthday!!!!! My goodness...I think after 22 the birthdays seem to come faster and faster every year! And it is exactly that reason that my birthday always makes me really contemplate the last year of my life. What I have done or haven't done, who I have met, things I have accomplished or not, things I want to do etc. etc.
In my previous blog, I wrote about a really great book that I purchased titled "Simple Abundance" by Srah Ban Breathnach. I wanted to post the essay for today because I really like it...and it reminds me to live life, take risks, and enjoy every moment!
February 7
An Artist is Someone Who Creates"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how...The artist never entirely knows. We guess. WE may be wrong but we take leap after leap in the dark".--Agnes De Mille
Most of us feel more secure when we play it safe. We wear a string of pearls, for example, instead of the hand-painted glass beads we glimpsed and passed up at the crafts fair. Yet it is precisely those red and purple glass beads around the neck of another woman that stop us dead in our tracks. "Wow", we mumble as we pass her on the street, "that looks fantastic". We also wonder how she knew it would.
She probably didn't. She probably just took a leap in the dark and trusted her instincts. She trusted her own sense of style. The necklace whispered, "Try me!" and she listened. She played at living -- in s small way to be sure, but relevant all the same-- by taking a chance.
Every day we are given chances to embrace the new. It could be serving focaccia at dinner tonight instead of garlic bread. It could be choosing a pair of floral socks that make our feet want to dance, instead of the plain pair we automatically reach for. It could be trading in the headband for a short, sleek sophisticated cut that really feels right.
Psychologist Susan Jeffers suggests, we "take a risk a day-- one small or bold stroke that makes you feel great once you have done it". Today, take a real risk that can change your life: start thinking of yourself as an artist and your life as a work-in-progress. Works-in-progress are never perfect. But, changes can be made to the rough draft during rewrites. Another colour can be added to the canvas. The film can be tightended during editing. Art evolves. So does life. Art is never stagnant. Neither is life. The beautiful, authentic life you are creating for yourself and those you love is your art. It's the highest art. "Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable", writer Brenda Ueland reminds you.
Hold that thought.
Love,
Terri Kate
