— Something I love about the act of creating art (whether it’s creating works of photo artistry, painting, writing, composing music) is that the very act of engaging in an artistic life trains us to live more deliberately.
Most people go through their days pulled this way and that by distractions, obligations, busywork of one kind or another … or glued to their phones, scanning email or texts, social media or TikTok. Then, to relax, they ensconce themselves behind their televisions or drift away on the internet for hours and hours and hours on end …
(Seriously. Look around. There are zombies among us.)
An artist is usually quite different.
How so?
Largely, I think, in the way an artist has learned to slow down.
And, in slowing down, the way an artist then makes time to sit down every day to CREATE something.
An artist allows the creation to step front and center for a while — above all the noise and the clatter.
And in doing this, the artist in a very real sense lays claim to his or her life.
In putting brush to canvas, pen to paper, stylus to tablet … it’s as if the artist has raised a hand of silence to the world and declared:
“Enough. This moment is MINE. Go away for now.”
This act is not trivial. It takes courage.
It takes being willing to stand up against everything else (everyone else) that would vie for your attention, and declare your right to shape your own life (at least this one beautiful, exquisite part of it) — deliberately. Intentionally.
At least for the next hour or two, YOU are calling the shots. This is your time. This is your life.
And you will live your life the way you wish to live it — creating something of your own, something that enriches an important part of you in a way that nothing else quite can, something that makes you happy and brings you joy.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
Something I love about the artists in my advanced AWAKE group is that they have stepped up to this challenge: They have learned to regularly shut out the rest of the world, take charge of their own day, and declare:
“This is MY time. This MATTERS.”
That act of intentional creation is really an act of intentional living.
And the results of that kind of living are evident in all the extraordinary artwork our AWAKE artists create and all the amazing successes so many of them have enjoyed.
But it’s in the lives our artists are living that I see as the real works of art.
It’s not just what they are creating.
It’s who they are becoming.
And that’s what excites me the most to see.
– Sebastian
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