Honey, You Were Born This Way

HOW DID I GET THIS WAY?

You didn’t ask to be an artist.  You were born this way.  And I’ll bet that sometime around the third grade you had a moment where it dawned on you:  I Am Not Like Everybody Else. 

Maybe you were moved to tears by a story or a piece of music, or maybe you were creating poetry or paintings at a level far beyond your years.  Somewhere along the line, you realized that you were funnier, quicker, more adept, more visual, more kinesthetic, more manual, more wordy, more zany, more intuitive, more verbal, more musical, more color-sensitive, more emotional, more creative and just plain MORE than the other kids in your class. 

Do you remember one of those moments?  Do you remember what inspired you?  Take a moment now to think back on that little kid.   Picture that kid.  Empathize.  It wasn’t easy being you while you were growing up.   But take just a moment – right now – to say a little prayer for that sweet, inspired kid.   

In your moment of realizing that you had all that more-ness, (“Holy Schmagoley – I’m an ARTIST!”) you were given to understand that you looked at the world in a way that was just a little different from all of your friends.

And notice, I said just a little different. 

At the same time that you were realizing that you were an artist, your friends were realizing that they had a real facility with numbers and that math made sense to them in a way that made them special.  And then there were your other friends, who realized they were adept at athletics.  Or the social butterflies who understood group dynamics and social politics in a way that is completely elusive to the rest of us.  Or whatever it was.  Every single one of those kids in your third grade class had some special skills that are just as wonderful and miraculous as being an artist. 

Or, at least, almost as wonderful and miraculous as being an artist.

Do you have a memory of discovering your craft?  How old were you?  What happened?

Photo Credit: Philip Goetz