Failing and Finding: A dream lesson

I woke the other morning and remembered a dream I had that night. The dream was so vivid in my mind, I can still play it back. It was very simple.

I was trying to paint a small canvas, and was looking for a design. I found a picture of one I like and was doing my best to copy it. Basically copying the design of someone else.

Yet no matter how careful I was with each brush stroke, it always looked like a sad and pathetic copy of something beautiful someone else had created. I was angry. I threw the brush away in disdain. I picked another brush and began to paint pointlessly, mixing what looked like a meaningless mass of varied colors on the canvas in anger. I was so very angry I ripped the canvas from it's framed and crumpled it, throwing it onto the floor near the trash.

I stared at it laying there sadly on the floor, yet had a sudden urge to open it and look again. So I did. I picked it up and pulled it open again. I saw that in crumpling it up,the random colors had mixed together. My random painting had become a beautiful landscape of shadowed trees stretching into the horizon, lit by a beautiful sunset. I gasped at it's beauty as my heart swelled. I felt redeemed. That is all I remember.

I saw when I woke and remembered that dream that it contained a powerful personal lesson from deep within.

We all wish to fit in, to belong, to be normal. Yet how many of us wake and live through each day knowing that such a goal is inevitably hopeless for us? We do our best to try and copy the people we admire, without realizing that in doing so we sometimes suck our own life away in the process.

We see something beautiful that another possesses, and we desire it. We see someone create something we wish we had, and we try to copy it. Admiring the gifts of another is only natural. Yet it can sicken us.

We begin to believe that everyone is surpassing us. We see those gifts and we are filled with envy, rage, and jealousy. How many day have I wasted in frustration and anger, wishing my life was as easy as this person's, our I could paint like that person, or speak like this person. Yet we try and emulate those things and fail miserably.

All the while we are neglecting our own talents and gifts. We are afraid to be who we truly are for fear that what we are will bring us ridicule. We hide our talents away until they decay into dust. All for fear that we won't be good enough in the eyes of another.

This dream made me realize that I have been living in that fear for too long. The anger I felt at that pathetic copy was all the anger and frustration I live with in trying to live my life according to the pleasure of others, and the fear of what they might think. That anger is the energy of my stifled desires, talents, and creativity.

The dream showed me that I need to use that energy to my own ends, to create something original, rather than let it become anger at the world for making me feel like such an outsider, an outcast, for the things I want most.

It also showed me that the only way for me to find fulfillment is to let go of my fears of the perception of others, and forge my own path, according to my own will and desire.

 I must allow myself to fail at being accepted, in order to truly accept myself.

In Frith,
Cena