Spark ⚡2: What happens if we stand still?

Today, I took my bike (a pandemic silver lining) on an 8am ferry from Brooklyn to Wall Street. Cycling around this city that I love is a whole new experience. It’s not for the faint hearted and I’ve decided not to read the statistics but instead embrace that It’s such a gift to be a novice again! A return to the ‘I know nothing’; negotiating traffic, figuring out the bike lanes that skim the surface of the bumpy roads and today having the choice to take the pretty and winding path along the Hudson with Lady Liberty and New Jersey serving as a striking backdrop. Some exercise, mixed in with adrenaline and somehow that ‘stuck’ feeling starts to dissipate.

There is something so true about the power of stretching out of our comfort zone that seems even more critical in a world where you long to create more and be in tune with your full capacity as an artist.

What happens if we stand still?

Fear can do that to us. A paralysis of the senses. The box around us gets smaller. The need for security and safety prevails. That feeling of being squashed starts to stutter through to your core and that’s when the feeling of escape comes up.

It feels like as artists you are always managing a constant flutter of ‘FIGHT or FLIGHT’?

What happens if we operate with too much caution? We dip a toe in but never fully immerse ourself in the water. We become comfortable doing nothing. Nothing. Waiting for the phone to ring. It feels safer somehow. But nothing makes us live within a certain bandwidth, neither high nor low frequency, we are existing and the world is grey. I don’t know about you, but I need the full colour version.

What keeps the artist in you awake?

I think the answer lies in the age old cliche of looking outside the box, stepping outside and taking another perspective. Every human being needs to keep moving and growing. We may not see or feel the growth when it’s happening, it’s only on reflection we realize how much something has grown. We aren’t aware how much our child or our pet or even our plant has grown. It usually takes an outsider to inform us of their growth. ‘Wow, look how much they have shot up?’

It’s actually been happening little by little in front of our eyes but we don’t notice the small steps only the giant leaps.

Every morning, a new page opens when our eyes do, we really are the only ones who can write it.

So, I encourage you to keep adventuring, it’s more beautiful with a new picture on that fresh page.

So my questions to reflect on today.. 💫