You know.
I just think it's so lovely that from the beginning of time, across every era and century, people have been writing and painting and singing and creating in every way they can, with every material they could touch, just because they needed to show what they were feeling.
And when they couldn’t do any of those, or when it wasn’t enough or just right, they used their bodies and movements instead, to dance and move, because the human need to express and make is such an intricate part of us, we'll do it in any form we can.
I find it comforting, and absolutely mind blowing, to look at something someone sculpted eight hundred, twelve hundred years ago, and think that they felt the same things I do.
A lot of things have changed over the course and passage of time, but what selection of emotions and feelings we’ve had as a species, as a race, have always been present. And we’ve always found ways to pour that into our surrounding, to share it with other people. We’ve always been in awe of sunsets and fascinated by our own bones and reverent of the ocean.
Humans a hundred and eightteen hundred years ago still laughed and cried. They joked and mourned and they felt anger and jealousy and creativeness.
And so I look at all these sculptures and paintings and books and I look at my own hands and I realize that hands just like them made what I’m looking at, what has survived wars and economic troubles and global devastations and entire lifetimes repeated over. What those people, the people who made them, were feeling when they made them has survived long enough for me to see it, to try and understand what they were feeling. To know, understand, instinctively, even if just a little bit, because if I have nothing else in common with them, I share the same charcuterie board of emotions.
So you look at all these amazing things people have made, and then you realize the same potential is in your own hands. You think about how what you touch and empty your excess of self into can linger for so long, that people decades or centuries later will read it or feel it and understand you, sympathize with you. Maybe better understand themselves; maybe find validation they can’t find elsewhere. And I just think that's nice.
I’m starting to dip my toes into things that bring me enjoyment, and I’m holding fast to the opinion that that's what being young is for. Discovery, adventure, curiosity. Not even just youth, actually, just life, no matter the stage. Most people don’t carry those things through with them to the end, or act on them anyway, and I think that’s an actual shame. And while I really hope I do have and keep those attributes until the day I die, I don’t want to put them off on the thought that I’ll get to experience them later.
I want to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself. I believe you have to find what you're so passionate about you'll leave yourself as you know it now behind to pursue it. You’ll step out of who you are now in order to grow and evolve.
So like, just start finding obscure hobbies and new interests and looking into them and trying them out. You can try a hundred and if you find just one that feels right, right down to your blood, then you have all you need.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with braving out of your comfort zone and introducing yourself to new things, even if you don’t become close acquaintances with every one. ’Cause eventually you’ll find one you’re smitten about and it will change your entire life, pretty much guaranteed for the better.
And I think that’s worth a bit of courage.