“If I don’t have red, I use blue.”
~ Pablo Picasso
Being able to be a chameleon can be a gift; except when it doesn’t serve you well. Finding the balance is the key to making life work.
Living honestly means actively engaging in the life you want while knowing that you can’t always get what you want so sometimes you have to make what is work for you.
Lately, I have been walking through life a little more honestly. I’ve been allowing myself the space to be who I am more openly and sometimes more quietly. With each step I take I realize most of us live with such strong dichotomies in our lives. We work towards goals while sometimes settling for reality; or we stop working towards what we want because what we want feels impossible to get.
To be the most healthy individuals possible, we have to walk gently with the world around us while we work towards creating what we want for our families/friends, our communities, the world, or most importantly ourselves. What we want is important; sometimes we settle for what is. Settling can be the easier route to take. My work has always been to create that which I want while adapting to what is.
I remember taking an art class as a junior high school student and finding myself frustrated with the options of supplies in front of me. I wanted what wasn’t there and I believed I couldn’t create without whatever it is I thought I needed. My teacher, Mr. Sherman taught me to trust myself and use what I had in front of me; he also taught me to ask for what I needed. In the end, it was my job to move forward with what was by making the best creations with what I actually had.
Whoever Mr. Sherman is and wherever he is, I love the man. He taught me what Picasso knew and what most young children know. Finding balance means working towards what you want by working with what you have.
The bottom-line is that in order for me to be in a good space, I need to walk through life while actively engaging in what jazzes my soul even as I trust the universe to give what the universe has to give.
And sometimes it’s all about finding the right tie-dye. How can anyone settle for just one color?
THIS is FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!! How did you know that I NEEDED to read this today. You are such a blessing, Chava, and this is an amazing example of what an extraordinary rabba you are! Kol Hakavod, chamudah, and much, much love and light.
Thank you Jessica!!! You are making me cry! Good tears, but tears.
I love you!
Chava
great picture, and great thoughts…I, as a Pisces (and, yes, since I grew up in California, the zodiac carries resonance for me, however bogus my rational side may see it), I have always been acutely and sometimes painfully aware of how mutable I am. I truly think that all people are mutable, but some folks either back away from that changeability, or conceal it, under the mistaken impression that they have to project a firm and unequivocal identity.
The wonderful thing about life is the dynamism of all creation – we are part of that, and, like the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect), we are all influenced moment by moment by our environment, and we, in turn, influence everything in our surroundings.
One nitpicking point – you have added the tag “adaption”, but I think you must mean “adaptation”!!
Love you,
janaki