Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Art of Life


Funny how things occur and come along seemingly at all of the wrong...errr, right times in life.  The moments that we have to sit back and make decisions based on a path or door that has materialized right at the moment when you thought everything was so clear.  I spent the day helping my oldest and best friend (and by oldest I don't mean in age) paint the mural above at the Hilton in Disneyland.  It was a glorious day of color and paint and simple task that was grounding and sweet.  It reminded me of being young and coloring in my favorite coloring book at the time, which my mom recently found and brought to me on my 40th birthday.  That coloring book was the thing that took me away into other worlds and times and just like the mural, I wasn't worrying about life and what would happen, I was just doing something that I loved...coloring...painting.  I suppose its akin to the way we can wake up and live our daily lives, as if we are just coloring and moving through in a process that is as organic and free as possible.  Today is one of those days that I am determined to do so and let the decisions that need to be made happen with coloring in mind.  The art of life is the color we give it each moment and letting those moments come together will produce the final picture that we didn't realize was there until after it was finished....whoa...that is kind of deep.  Its like Steve Jobs said in his commencement speech at Stanford, "You cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking back."  That has always stuck with me as a profound way of living and thinking.  If we are constantly trying to look forward and make sense of the pattern there really is no way to know, but if we settle into the practice of trusting that the next dot will show up exactly how it is supposed to, then when we look at it from above it will begin to make sense and the journey will be full of amazing color and life.  All of this is much easier said than done, and I am in no way an expert at this practice...as a matter of fact, I am constantly getting in the way of my dots and arguing with them and trying to move them...but I do know that the love I have for life will give me a glorious and wonderful book to remember in the end...one with color that I never could have imagined.  Today I will promise to not try and chase the dot.

Love and Understanding...
J

1 comment:

mom said...

justin
how well i remember you and gus (with the 30 colored felt tip pens set), coloring for hours on end.
you shunned the 'color by number' art books even when you were young...always choosing to make your own creation--making your own way through the creative process. i so admire the way you continue to live, and work and play with that same sense of individuality and creativity. here's to your connecting the dots backwards.
mom