It's finally spring time. After what felt like nine months of wet and cold, the air is finally turning warm. Sunshine creeps into bedrooms at early hours, and even the most stalwart hibernators have been roused to go and see what the world is growing. Trees, flowers, gardens; birds digging in the grass, insects charging up on sunlight and perusing available petals.
This is a time of year when we begin to dig out all of the residue of the winter. We clean and scrub and sweep until, at last, the home is fresh with the new warm breezes entering in through cracked windows and screen doors. We're renewed by it. We're finally allowing ourselves to grow with the season: the learned lessons, the new hopes, the passionate purposes we cultivate within ourselves.
Spring is a favorite here at Develop. This particular writer prefers to spend his outside time digging in the dirt, and growing plants for food. To actually put roots in the ground in the home I live in. In surrounding myself with the new things growing in the world, I have frequently found myself contemplating personal growth, as well.
As you can probably tell, my personal style in my pieces has shifted a lot. With all of the recent shifts in my life, I have struggled to keep up. For longer than I have realized, I've let go of large pieces of me: the need to create, the need to build, the need to provide. But, the few times that I did work on projects during the winter, these were moments that forever shaped my process.
Art is supposed to be about connection. One of the many cool things that humans do is feel emotion. Admittedly, we're not the only creatures that do so, but that's part of what makes it so special. With humans, however, part of our social interactions require that we attempt to share these experiences with others. Art is one way that we can do that.
Figuring out how to do it, though, is an entirely separate issue.
The truth is, I'm not sure I've figured it out. After a long process of attempting to develop my work into something I felt comfortable sharing to a wider range of people, I began to feel like I was missing a part of it. Thus, as I struggled in my own life to connect to others, the pieces I developed also seemed to leave something lacking.
There are times in our lives when we meet people who will ultimately change our lives forever. These individuals will always leave the impact they made on us. We see parts of them in the things we do, the mannerisms we have, the tones we use, the beliefs that we harbor. The depth of their impact, however long lasting, sometimes even seem to remain long after the responsible party has exited out of our daily lives and routines. We love, we lose, we live.
And we become part of each other. We do it with our families, we do it with our friends. Our coworkers, our students, our communities. We see one another, we begin to see our struggles, and our strengths in the individual. We allow ourselves to experience empathy, to put ourselves in the shoes of those around us, to imagine their experiences. And we grow with them.
I hope that, to someone out there, the things that I feel when I'm creating something are heard. I hope that I can become a force for good in the world. I hope my children create growth and love in the world around them.
What a better time for hope than spring?
In my garden this morning, I took pause from pulling up small weeds and otherwise tending to my plants, and allowed myself the opportunity to actually connect to the world around me. And particularly the people that are not only in my life, but a part of my life.
Whatever is planted deeply is not easily uprooted
Whatever is embraced sincerely does not crave escape.
..In this way you will know others by what you do yourself.
You will know families by what you contribute as a family.
you will know the world by what you do as a planetary citizen.
I'm so thankful for the people in my life that remind me of the good in the world. I'm thankful for being reminded that happiness -true happiness- is not simply an emotional state. True happiness is a state of mind. The world will forever be in grey scale, and the filters we use will always result in finding lines to separate the black and the white.
My dear friends, please remember that this is a time in our lives when we should embrace our new changes. Remember to let others in, and if you are given the opportunity to be embraced someone's life, cherish that connection.
