“Entry Point” Acrylic on Canvas, 20 x 20, MelyndaVanZee©2015

Dear Creative Heart,

Several months ago I received an email from a young creative friend, she wrote…

“I keep thinking I should have this figured out by now.”

Me too.

Oooh my…how we wish we could have a clear map for our creative journeys-how we inwardly desire to have it all figured out. Some days we long for the assurances… if I do A, then B will happen, and then, of course, LMNO… will show up… and while it is true that if we DO the WORK-it will set certain things in motion, but there are still no guarantees of what exactly will be set in motion. Each creative has their own journey, their own path to unfold and there are no guaranteed outcomes. We don’t want to hear this. We fight this truth. We try to schedule, and plan, and set goals to achieve those imagined outcomes. Our north American culture-our hard work ethic models that if we work hard, live upstanding lives, get the right grades, go to the right schools, make the right friends, find the right person to marry, then…”it will all work out”, but nothing could be farther than the truth. We often listen too loudly to all of these voices that try to mold our future lives and lure us into believing that if we can only figure out the “right choices” then we will have conquered this thing called life. But, the truth is we can’t predict how we may be blessed, and we thankfully don’t get see the tragedies that may befall us in our life times.

May I suggest a shift in posture. May I suggest instead of struggling to figure out “the right”, we stand instead in the place of not knowing. Rather than adding more fuel to the fire of our gut-wrenching inner struggle to figure out the future-to morph our creativity into a package that will do what we want it to do…that we simply focus on the creative activity in front of us by stripping our creativity of the burden of the future.

Facing the blank canvas or the empty page is a cycle to be repeated over and over again in the life of every creative. Right now I’m facing my own empty canvases, unsure of exactly what is going to show up when the paintbrush begins to engage the paint this time around. And so I walk again thru the door, stand at my table, prepare the tools for the work at hand, squeeze out the paint, give myself the freedom and the permission to begin again, not knowing the outcome, but committed to undertaking the process again…leaving the outcomes parked outside the studio door…thinking not about having this creative process all figured out by now, but engaging the potential in beginning again. Relaxing into the love of paint flowing off of the brush, color mingling in front of my eyes, allowing the spirit from which creativity flows to move my hands and engage my eyes and let the “what is” of the present moment swirl outward from deep within.

With Passion,

Melynda

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