Reality as the artist

I breathe in. I breathe out.

Light just barely filters through curtains. It's cold. The bed is warm.

Next to me a toddler is wriggling. 

Is it light enough? She asks.

She has been wriggling for 30 minutes or so. 

My husband and I keep hoping she will return to sleep and we can drift in drowsy dozing a little longer.

Alas. This is not the way of the toddler, brimming with stored up energy after a night of rest.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

I remind myself that I am the artist. 

That reality and the experience of my life is my artwork. 

And I open my eyes.

Things are different in the light of this perception.

The perception of oneself as the artist.

I stumbled across the idea quite accidentally recently. And its been getting stronger with practice. 

It has the power to pull joy from the mundane and it gives one the courage to take calculated risks.

If my life is my masterpiece... what colours do I choose? What do I not choose?

What feelings do I wish to explore in more depths?

Which experiences do I seek to capture, if only fleetingly, before they fall away into the past?

On a spiritual level, the idea that one creates one's own reality is a popular one. Yet, it never occurred to me that from this perspective, one is a reality artist. Painting with and through reality as it plays its tune and builds its pictures through you... 

It bears little weight whether one believes that you create your own reality or not.

The artistry of your existence is still evident. 

In the way you design your days.

In ritual.

Small and large. 

The cup of coffee and the morning paper.

The way it sounds as you turn the page.

Christmas morning and stockings in the heat of summer.

Sweat beads and sandals.

In the beauty of the emotions you share.

In the way your footsteps sound.

In the way you speak to plants.

In the way they speak to you in their wordless ways.

In the way you dance like a fool in your kitchen.

In the way your fingers feel.

In the way you cannot capture a life in any total way, except to live it.

In the way you open your eyes to your daughter at 6:30am on a freezing morning.

When we are the artist... our vision shifts. It shifts to our hand, the one with the paint brush.

We consider more carefully what we do and how we do it.
And yet, everything also becomes less serious.
Starting projects that speak to your excitement and not ending them is okay.
Coming back to them with renewed enthusiasm is okay.
Taking risks and trying new things just because is okay.

Everything can be a dance.

Everything is a heartsong.

The thing about art... is it isn't only happy. It's everything, and sometimes most of it at once.

It's pain and joy and ordinariness.

When I close my eyes I see my days as a ribbon, swirling out from me, falling away into potentials.

And there I am, the artist.

Creating a life, finding joy in the everyday artistry of eating an apple.

Or finding a shoe.

Or feeling alone.

Or drinking water after forgetting to for 3 hours.

And there I am crying over past sadnesses.

Or a stubbed toe.

Or the mystery of the world.

Or the unknowability of the future.

Or my fear of being unloveable.

While eating a joyful apple.

What power we hold when we are the artist, and yet... we are also restrained by the tools at our disposal.

This is the beauty of artistry, that an artist creates from what they have.

Be the artist that you were born to be. 

Ask yourself: if my life is my masterpiece, how does that change what I do, how I see, how I treat myself?

Much love

H.