Being yourself

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"Aannsha," I hear someone say. "This Expression of Life thing that you’ve been going on about in the Expression of Life article – it’s easy for you to say, but I’m not creative, I’m no good at expressing myself and frankly, I wouldn‘t know where to begin."

Interestingly, when I typed this, I transposed the letters for ‘begin’ and typed ‘being’. And while I corrected the spelling mistake, it did occur to me that I’d inadvertently typed a part of the answer. (And I know ‘part’ also spells ‘prat’, but that’s got nothing to do with anything here, okay).

You see, being – being you – your SELF – is basically all you have to do. You follow your deepest heartfelt urges. If you want to sing in the shower, even if the neighbourhood cats chuck rotting fish at you when you leave your apartment because your voice is shot – sing! If you have an urge to kiss your boyfriend because he’s just a sweetie, even though everyone in the class is looking and they think he’s a dork – do it anyway. And if you feel so moved by the sadness in the world news, go ahead, cry your heart out. You may be the boss of a multi-million dollar corporation and you may be reviewing the news as part of your Monday morning staff meeting. But you’re human. And so are the rest of the employees.

My mother, God love her, swears she hasn’t got a creative bone in her body. But I’ve seen what she can do with some cream cheese, an anchovy and a Ritz cracker. It’s heaven on a plate at a cockail party. She also adds to her non-creative conviction by reminding me that the only way I’ll recognise her drawing of a tree (rather than think it’s a lollypop) is by noticing the bird (with ears) sitting on the branch and a dog cocking its leg (looking more like a bird) at the bottom. Okay, so she may not be Leonardo da Vinci, but she created my sister and she also made me. She cooks a fantastic breakfast special (grilled bacon, tomato and grated cheese, sizzling on a round of toast), and she used to knit little woollen dresses for my Cindy doll. Each and every one of those things was created from her heart – and each and every one has brought at least one person joy.

Expressing yourself, as you’ve probably gathered by now, doesn’t have to come in the form of a million dollar work of art. It can be as simple as rearranging the ornaments on the cabinet when you next dust it. Maybe you’ll decide to move a young tree in the garden to a more airy spot, killing the root system of the nearby gardenia bush so half of it wilts and dies, but hey, the overall finished effect (once you’ve cut away the dead bits) looks far more balanced. My husband did this recently – gardening’s his thing – and he was much happier for following his urges. As well as appreciating the aesthetic joy of balance, he also gets a lot of pleasure from pruning. So all in all, he had a wonderful experience.

Okay, I’ve told you about my mother’s gifts, and also my husband’s. My son (the one who likes to spend time travelling under my arm as you’ll see in Expression of Life article), is probably the master in the family at expressing himself. It comes naturally to him and will continue to do so until his parents, teachers and various significant others, necessarily or unwittingly (God forgive us), train him otherwise. At the moment, he’s quite at home voicing his feelings, immediately, in no uncertain terms – very loudly and right in your ear for no reason other than he wants to. He loves reshaping his food on the way to his mouth – by hand – around his feeding chair, face, hair, and the general vicinity. And when he’s outside, he loves watching the patterns the water makes on the patio as it drips out of the hosepipe. Luke lives his life with unabashed abandon from the moment he bounds around his cot at 5.30am until he flops back into it around 7pm. I do my best to keep up. At the moment, Luke is my greatest teacher of self-expression. From expressing my feelings in appropriate ways, to finding another creative project for us when he gets bored again.

In Expression of Life, it says, "… Fear not separation as all things are bound together as dancers in the intricate Dance of Life…" I think this will touch a core with most of us. I don’t know about you, but when I get the urge to do something new – especially if it’s something major, like leaving a job for another venture, or leaving a partner to explore one’s individuality – I get scared. Scared of separation. Scared of losing. Scared of being alone. Scared of dying. Whatever. Just plain scared. Actually, sometimes speaking my truth to someone can bring up the same fears, if they are important to me.

In the past, I used to let those fears stop me from expressing myself as the desire for change came up. So I would stick with it until I could bear it no longer, because basically I was afraid of going into the boss and saying, "Look boss, I really like you, and at some point in the fairly recent past I actually enjoyed this job. But I want a change now. My soul is calling me to some new adventure and it’s time for me to move on. I actually want to leave now, but as I’m a person of honour, I’ll give you two weeks notice." Instead, I would sit on the desire for change and suppress the creative energy that was beginning to surface. I would do this by eating or drinking or sleeping. I would sit in the job, stew over how boring it was, drag my feet every morning on the way to work and watch the clock most of the day. I would toy with the idea of changing jobs, but again fear of new, fear of less money, fear of making a mistake would grab me. So I’d do a bit more eating and drinking and sit in the job for a little while longer. And when I was thoroughly miserable and feeling like a rat trapped in a corner, I’d eventually find some ridiculous excuse to leave and bounce out feeling bad about the whole thing. I was just the same when it came to relationships. And where I could have danced through those early years, my modus operandi put a bit of a damper on the whole "new" experience.

Never mind, I learned. Eventually. And as I’ve gained trust in my inner voice, and honoured my inner promptings, expressed my desires clearly and quickly, I’ve found my journey through life has become a fun-filled, flowing event. People and situations come to me much more easily as I keep in the flow. I find that as I speak from my heart rather than what I think others want me to say and realise that my heart-felt wishes for experiences are just as valid as everyone else’s – and go for them – they materialise more and more instantly. It’s fun actually.

Expression of Life also says "…Rejoice…" When you wake up in the morning and realise that you are a co-creator with the magnificent God Force, you want to rejoice. Okay, sometimes at 5.30am in the middle of winter when the next door neighbour screeches home in his hot rod and does a hand break turn into his driveway for the third night (morning) running, you don’t feel that much like rejoicing. But on the whole, when you listen to your inner voice and trust that you really are a creative being, you begin to see that life really is beautiful, that all experiences are bliss and you get a little skip in your heart because you know that your life is on its way from good to fantastic!

At school art class, I used to be great at copying. I would get an A for every assignment. I could draw a cauliflower to look like the real thing. But one semester, we got a new teacher, and she scrapped copying for "drawing from the inside out". I would take my blank piece of paper home for homework and stare at it until tears ran down my face. But I couldn’t think of anything to draw. Art, for a long time, lost its joy for me. Until one day, when I was an adult, I went to a workshop that taught us to scribble draw to music with crayons on butcher paper. We gave ourselves permission to create something that "had flaws". We just went with the music, went with the flow. We started with the crayon on the paper and just moved it and let it go from there. And do you know, after that, I found it easier to paint from the "inside". Actually, that’s how I write these days. I start with a topic that my heart wants to talk about. I put my hands to the keys, and I just start typing. The ‘being/begin’ paragraph at the top of this article is a good example of how it goes. Even mistakes can lead to something lovely.

So in a nutshell: Drop the judgement. Drop the fear. Listen to your heart. And just go with the flow. That’s all there is to being creative. One minute you’re sticking some flowers in a vase. The next, you’re a creative master truly living your life.

Copyright © 2006 Aannsha Jones