When the Pupils Dilate

"You are one decision away from a totally different life."

Life is so short. There are so very few things that can make us happy, and yet we instead constantly pursue the things that squelch this very joy. We choose the things that force us to dread waking up every morning, that dull the enjoyment of eating meals, and even that make the sun seem to shine less brightly. Why?

Because we were told to.

"Art is a hobby."
"You need a stable job."
"You're being selfish."
"You can't support a family like that."
"This is just a phase."

Listen closely as I speak for the thousands of unspoken voices battling depression, anxiety, and fear because they are not allowed to choose to do what they love each and every day:

This is not a phase.

This is who we are. Why is it selfish to be happy? Every person should be doing what they love whether it be engineering or dancing. If you daydream about another profession, another idea, or another life, then that is what you love. You were born to live that life, not this life you were forced to fit into. So many people go to work but only wish they could get back home to their hobby, because that is what they truly love. You do not have to live like that. When did hobbies become the secrets of who you really are? The question is simple...

What makes you smile? What makes your face light up? What makes your pupils dilate? Love is a chemical response in the brain, and when that feeling appears, the pupils dilate. A very simple bodily function to a unforgettable and magnificent feeling. Does it happen when you talk about your favorite book? A movie concept? This song that makes you want to dance? The colors you want to use for your next painting? A single lyric in your favorite poem? Watch for the pupils and when they dilate. You will know who a person really is by what they love.

Find that thing that makes you happy and do not let it go. It is part of who you are. It is part of your story. If you do not know what makes you happy then think about this:

Have you ever woken up so overwhelmingly ecstatic about something?

Then remember that. Hold on to that. Because if you chase that very thing, the odds are that you will wake up with that feeling again, as you were meant to. No longer do you have to be unhappy just to please someone else, to conform to society or peer pressure, or to do what you thought you were supposed to love. You are free to wake up in the morning with a smile once more.

You were born to be happy so do not let anyone else tell you otherwise.

When do your pupils dilate?

What Are You Fighting For?

"When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favor of the war effort, he simply replied, 'Then what are we fighting for?'"

Turn on the news. It's hard to not find tragedy. People are hurting, looking for peace--looking for any sort of joy.

They need to be inspired now more than ever. They need something that makes them smile.

Why can't you provide that something?

This is a world where one event shakes the entire earth and brings us all together, not as nations but as brothers and sisters of humanity. When the world is shaking, something sturdy is needed. In the wake of tragedy, people need to hope. Why can't you be the one to inspire someone with hope?

In these times, it is easy to lose the focus on what is really important and what really brings people together. Winston Churchill understood that better than most.

So why are the arts so important in times like these? Not only do they provide a much needed escape, a paradisaical respite from war, but they combat war. Art provides hope, joy, and love, everything that war is not.

Why?

We're human, and art is a part of us. It's who we are. We are either Creators or Decimators. We bring art, or we bring war. The choice is ever present, and the struggle is ever constant.

What are you fighting for?

Down the Rabbit Hole

"We're all a little mad here..."

Art has a funny way of appearing in the most unexpected circumstances.

I know from experience that one wrong note plucked on a guitar can lead to a whole new song. One out of place line can lead to a entirely different poem. These are not mistakes. They are living, breathing forms of your story, and they are leading you to something beautiful.

Follow them.

Do I sound crazy? Maybe it's because I dared to open those parts of myself and followed those emotions and thoughts down the rabbit hole. There, I discovered a feeling I could never quite express in words. Not only that, but I also felt joy in creating something that was entirely my own. I went down the rabbit hole and followed that wrong note until I discovered a hidden part of my own story.

What would have happened if I had fixed the mistake?

Play a chord until the lyrics come out of your mouth. Put a song on repeat until the music affects your body. Hold a brush until a drop of paints falls onto the canvas.

And follow it down the rabbit hole.

Daring to be Impulsive

When we were young children, we cried when we were sad, we laughed when we were happy, and we screamed when we were angry. We voiced our emotions whenever we felt like it. We followed our impulses, because at the time, that was all we knew. We were spontaneous. At the time, it was okay.

But then we grew up. And suddenly, feeling something was wrong. Very early on, we were taught to hide what we felt. We were taught to silence our desire to follow impulses. We still felt them, but we could not follow them. We could not longer cry, no longer scream--we did not stop feeling, no. But we were not supposed to reveal what we felt. So what happened to those feelings, those instincts?

They were bottled up. Every impulse to feel something was muffled, because we had to "act normal." Without realizing it, we were taught that being an adult meant that you cannot be spontaneous.

If this is true, then I do not want to be an adult.

But what if there was an escape from the pressures of growing old? What if there was a way to cry, laugh, and scream without judgment? All you need is a place to direct those impulses.

You see, art is not always premeditated. A feeling is felt, and then that feeling is followed. What follows next is a masterpiece. Every great songwriter, painter, or writer created something beautiful, because they first felt something. If you do not allow yourself to feel certain things, then how can you express them? And if you do not express them, then how can you reach someone who is experiencing the very same thing?

Following impulses is simpler than you think. The next time you have a reasonable idea, act on it. That very impulse you might have silenced could be the greatest adventure of your life.

Therefore, I will continue to follow my own impulses and choose to find spontaneity in every day. Art is outside the box; why can't you be too?

So I will choose to randomly sit out here under the stars, past midnight, playing on my guitar, because that is what makes me happy.

And who knows...that one impulse that led me to this spot might be the reason that this song I'm now writing touches someone's life or makes them laugh.

All because I felt something, and I followed that feeling.

Do you dare?

Who's the Star?

"I once took this English class in college, and we had been going over a brief, very literature and "English" way of seeing a worldview of love. One thing that really stuck out to me was one of my professors points and more importantly a video and quote he used to illustrate his point. My professors third point in his lecture was the 'requisite of love - the royal law of love'. He went on from there to explain that to love someone one you must be able to recognize our sameness, and to have a loving appreciation of uniqueness (how vastly different we all are).  He then clicked his laptop and this quote appeared on the projector in front of me and what I read hit me right in the very center of my heart:

 "Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real." Iris Murdoch

Oh, ouch! It hit me after I read it a second time how very guilty I am of committing this crime too. What Murdoch, in this simple one sentence, conveys is that until you take the spotlight off of yourself and realize you are not the star of the universe; until you do this you will not be able to love. And yes Iris Murdoch is right, how 'difficult of a realization' this is. I think to some degree we all see ourselves as the stars in our own movies. And that the rest of the people in our life play principle characters and may very well win Oscars in this life for best supporting actress or best supporting actor. However, we are the star! Yet it did ever occur to you that the person you passed in the hallway at work or school, just once (you'll never see them again) thinks the same very thing about themselves? To each other we're simply extras in each others movie...yet we're starring in our own movie. I'd never realized how, without even trying, self centered I was. How could I be so caught up in whats happening around me that I didn't stop to notice the 'extras' in 'my movie'?! Everyone has a story, and their story affects how they act day to day, and that story deserves to be heard. I think that's what true love is, or maybe this chips away at what true love is. It's kinda like that line from Les Miserables,

"To love another person is to see the face of God"

 Because of this simple general education class I now have a brand new perspective on people that I pass in the hallway's, the person I sit next to at a stoplight. What's their story? What have they been through? And if given the chance would I love them enough to listen to their story? I think that's what true love is, or definitely a big part, not focusing on yourself and your life but seeing the 'extras' in your life and making them 'the stars' of the show."

 --Maggie Quick, Guest Contributor

Regifting a Smile

"I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope they feel its enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person." - Charlie from The Perks of Being a Wallflower

How many times has something changed your day? How many times has it changed your life? Maybe you know this feeling all too well, or maybe you can't even imagine what it might feel like. I've had those moments where I wished I could just thank the writer, the author, the creator for touching my life, but there was no way of reaching them. Maybe you can't thank them. But what you can do is inspire someone else. You can extend how they made you feel to another. You can make someone happy.

Why? Because someone made you happy. Give that same gift to someone else. And even if you are not happy, art has a funny way of putting a smile on your face regardless of whether you are giving or receiving it. If you don't agree, prove me wrong.

Because even if you create something to show me that it didn't make you happy, I'll be smiling. I'll be overjoyed to look at your art, and I'll be inspired to keep creating myself. Just think of what you'll feel when you see you put smiles on the faces of dozens, hundreds, thousands.

You should be happy--you should be proud. Because you've made me happy.

And I'm only one person.

This is Our Story

What’s Your Story?

Everybody’s got one…how will you tell yours?

Art is everywhere—especially in you. A simple melody, a three-word phrase, a wordless stroke of a paintbrush are all flashes of art in our world. They make up everything around us, though crafted only by those few famous creators of our time. Every song, every poem, every painting is left to the professionals. But now, it is your time.

You, the everyman. Art is everywhere—especially in you.

I am not a man of legend. My brain is not a brilliant palace of creativity, but I do have a story. I will tell my story. I could tell it through dance. I could tell it through song. I could tell it through novels, paintings, poems, sketches, photography, graphic design, music of any instrument, lyrics, scripts, film, calligraphy, acting, hair design, makeup design, cooking, sculpting, sewing, knitting, short stories—the list goes on and on, because the list only stops when you decide you cannot create any more. But you can make art. After all, art is everywhere—especially in you.

But what exactly is “art?”

Art, nowadays is an off-putting term. We only go to see art at a gallery, and when we have had our fill, we leave the art behind until we think of it again, only as an activity, possibly years later. Most of the population frowns on art as though it should only be a pastime. I intend to change that mindset. Art is not meant to be solely housed inside a stationary prison but endlessly spread across the world for everyone to see. Those paintings, structures, and sculptures seen at museums and exhibits are only fractions of what art could be. When did sonnets, plays, music, and dance all stop becoming “art?” In the modern definition of the word, art is “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful.”

If that is the definition of art, then that inspires the question…what is beautiful?

You.

You are beautiful because you were created by the Beautiful. There is nothing that separates you from the professionals of this age, other than your ingrained presupposition that you simply cannot create. You are a unique and interwoven tapestry of emotions, thoughts, and ideas. Why not express them? This mess of sunshine and darkness, hopes and fears, memories and imaginations fused at your very core is what I call your story. Your story is your being. It is who you were, who you are, and who you will become simultaneously coexisting in the same plane: you. There is no one way to express your story, for each story is pricelessly unique and deserves to be told a thousand different times in a thousand different ways.

So if your story is you—and you are beautiful—and art is anything that is beautiful, then your story is art. Anything you create can be a masterpiece, not based on grade, skill level, fear of failure to reach perfection, desire to impress others, or traditional lenses of the word beauty but based solely on your heart—your story.

What if my story impacts a million people? Or even more…what if my story impacts just one? How can I not share my story and touch that one life, inspiring it with the everyday beauty in life? Not only will sharing your story impact your own life, but it will impact others. It will inspire both yourself, those around you, and those you have yet to meet. Your story will be seen, heard, and felt.

But how can you do that? It’s simple. Start by creating something once a week through any one of the innumerable art forms and post it on any social media site. Get your story out there and encourage others to join in with sharing what is in their heart. Share the pages and accounts of “What’s Your Story?” with your friends and tag the pages whenever you craft a form of art.

Spread a revolution of beauty, a revival of personal creativity. It begins with you.

Never stop creating, never stop dreaming, and never stop telling your story.

Art is everywhere—especially in you. Your story is art. It is anything you choose to create. You story is waiting…

Everybody’s got one: this is our story...how will you tell yours?

What are you waiting for?

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