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Today's
Meditation:
It always surprises me when I learn that people in
cultures that are different from mine expect their kids to
be able to express themselves creatively. They don't
expect perfection or fine art, but it's just a natural
part of life that everyone is able to use their artistic
talents to be able to express something important about
themselves to others. When I see this, I think of
how often we squelch the creativity of our young people
because it somehow doesn't "measure up," and it
makes me sad.
When I was young, I had a lot of adults criticize whatever
I did artistically-- people who really had no idea of what
creativity meant, or of what expression meant-- and that
did change the ways in which I expressed myself. I
still practiced art, as I wasn't going to let their
criticism change me, but I no longer shared it with
adults. I wouldn't even take art classes, because I
had one teacher who never really gave any instruction, but
who came along and slapped a grade on whatever we did--
and
how were we supposed to improve then? So art became
an isolated activity, and that was fine by me.
Many other kids that I knew, though, stopped drawing or
painting or writing completely after a few incidents of
others criticizing their work, or laughing at it and
mocking it. Sometimes kids give up because of the
criticism of others, and sometimes they give up because
they set their own standards far too high, judging their
own work against the work of other people who have had far
more training and practice than they have. Either
way, we all lose out when any individual gives up his or
her artistry in life.
Every one of us is an artist. It's too bad we so
often let our artistic sides waste away, though, as the
demands of "life" keep us too busy to paint or
to draw or to write or to sculpt. . . or whatever other
endeavor allows us to express the artist inside of
us. It can be reclaimed, though-- even if we didn't
"remain" artists, we definitely can recapture
the artist who could have been, at any time we'd like, and
then we can enrich the world with our creations.
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