Today I was cleaning up a flood in my basement — about the 6th in this recent chain of rainy days. Among the things that had to get thrown out were some old drawings I did for an art class when I was in college. Those drawings, carefully hidden in a dusty portfolio for more than 20 years, hold a critical secret — a lesson about human potential. Thank God for the destructive rain that shook my core enough for me to wake up to a powerful fact I seem to have forgotten to utilize.
What I realized this morning is that I have been missing the point of my own lesson for a very, very long time.
You see, the reason I took that art class in college was that for years I had been deathly afraid of any form of art. I had long accepted “I can’t draw” and “I have no artistic talent” as immutable truths. Having recently gotten into recovery through a 12-step fellowship, I had embarked on a spiritual journey that opened me up to a world of possibility — a new mentality of questioning old assumptions and trying new things.
Why couldn’t I draw? I had met a friend named Dawn who was taking this entry level art class as part of a generral studies requirement. One day over lunch Dawn showed me a few things and I quickly discovered that I wasn’t quite as hopeless as I thought. It was an exciting, freeing, mind opening experience to be able to recreate that cartoon cat — or whatever it was — from a poster on the wall of the cafeteria. The very next semester I signed up for Intro to Drawing, a course that turned out to be a wild emotional ride for me.
The first day brought excruciating frustration and ultimately tears, anger and — finally — surrender. The first assignment was meant to see where each of us was holding in terms of basic skills. We sat with our desks in a big circle around a bunch of still life junk — chairs, flower pots, giant blocks…. As the girl next to me, a skinny, sexy Bohemian blonde who I had seen roaming the halls on the arm of an ape-ish thrash rocker type whose har was died black and nearly as long as her perfect legs. Sorry, I got lost in that digression. Always was a sucker for the skinny, skanky type. Very distracting, even twenty something years later. Anyway, she was drawing away, recreating the scene on the floor in front of us, and all I could do was keep drawing and erasing the same line over and over. Eventually, I just had to leave the room. I went wandering the halls pounding on lockers and wondering if I should have ever even tried this when I felt my eyes starting to fill up. I cried the tears of the three year old who angrily pushed a crown all over his drawing, frustrated that he couldn’t seem to get it just the way he had intended. The memories of that moment were hazy but the emotions were in vivid releaf, guiding so many of my choices at the subconcious level, part of the fabric of incorrect assumptions that we develop through early experience and then abide by faithfully, unalterably, until freedom final crashes its way into our lives.
During the course of the next 16 weeks, with the help of a teacher who was touched by my sincere desire to face my old fears and a willfullness that I have absolutely no explanation for, I slowly but surely developed the skills that enabled me to have a dusty old collection of drawings that led my kids this morning to say “wow, you’re a great artist” as I laid the damp remains to see what could be salvaged and to take one final look at the rest. Those tears, that resolution, and those humble efforts combined to bring out somethign in me that I never knew I had. That ability was carefully protected from actualization because of my self image and inexperience. It took surrender, hope, desire, honesty, willingess and effort on my part. And it also took a supportive, receptive and challenging guide to help me through. With those ingredients, the impossible became possible and then became actual.
It was an amazing act of courage for that young man to drop his guard of fatal coolness long enough to show his weakness and vulnerability. That was the first step in the process. The lesson learned was that nothing is truly impossible.
For taking that class and hanging in there when it got tough, I am a hero. But I do need to own my errors as well. First, I felt crushed when I saw this morning that my precious drawings were basically ruined. I had become so attached to the physical manifestation of my efforts, that I forgot to appreciate what those drawings represent. “I could never do this today,” I heard myself say. Oh boy had I missed the point!!!! Of course I could draw today — better than ever if I wanted to. The secret is tapping into that desire and opening up to that guidance. It’s not about the drawings — they are memories of a divine discovery. The Divinity itself is every bit as much present today as it was back then. Treasuring the pictures is an attachment to the physical world that blinded me from the actual beauty that was manifest in the pictures.
Secondly, to the extent that those pictures should be valued, it should be as an inspiration for continued growth and challenge of perceived limitations. Those pictures prove that what my brain tells me I can and can’t do is not objective truth — and it’s not necessarily true at all. Those pictures belonged on the walls, not in dead storage. And not because they would have made my house prettier, but because they might have served as an occasional reminder to me that what I think of as limits may be nothing but old stories that have become so engrained in my psyche that they stop me from going for my goals — or even from having the audacity to have goals anymore.
It’s time to wake up.
© All material Copyright 2009 by Foxx Falcon