"My hair is longer than my talent" - Cezanne
A remarkably unbelievable quote when I read it in a Smithsonian article recently, from a man whose art is now priceless. Cezanne was haunted all of his life by his imagined inadequacy. He would get so frustrated by his inability to perfectly translate nature onto his canvases that he would leave them in the fields. This peek into a master's life finally convinced me of what I had long suspected was true. That each of us, no matter who we are - celebrity, author, director, inventor, scientist, athlete, artist, parent, or just your plain old average Joe or Josephine - think, at one time or another - that our work, our life, our very being - is crap.
Somewhere along the way, whether for hours, days, or a lifetime, we lose that ability to see ourselves as the Universe knows us 2B. We all inherit the same potential, the same everything 2B anything we want 2B, when we are born. No one has anymore of a headstart when they are born than anyone else. You may argue that someone born into wealth and privilege is indeed head and shoulders above a starving child in Africa, but then you would be missing the point. What I'm referring to is what is INSIDE each of us, not the circumstances to which we are born into. There are countless stories of people who rose from poverty and other extreme circumstances to go on to greatness. And this was because of what they had on the inside.
But sometimes this thing we possess inside our soul, this knowingness, this potential, this confidence, call it what you will, gets covered up by events in our lives, tragic or mundane, but events that cause us to doubt our greatness and abilities. Be it our parents or spouse telling us we're no good and will never amount to anything, being molested or abused, laughed at by other children when we were young, or something as mind-numbing as working a dead-end job for 25 yrs. Whatever the cause, we become Stepford robots, walled off from our true potential, thinking we are living life when we are merely just surviving it. Most of us don't even remember that we HAD any potential, much less are we living it. We've been programmed to think we're happy, to not want to strive for anything more, much less our full potential as human beings.
For those of us that DO realize we possess infinite potential, perhaps our burden, our pressure to succeed is even greater. I myself have had this knowing all of my life. I just chose not to actually DO anything about it until I was in my 40's and figured I'd better get my ass in gear B4 I croaked. So I'm a late bloomer, I know. Better late than never I guess. I also was gifted with low self esteem which made it impossible to believe that I was capable of anything more than holding down jobs that were beneath me and being with men who would only reinforce my lack of confidence in myself. BUT NO MORE!
Yes, it's a brand new day. After reading that Cezanne thought his life's work was crap, and after years of thinking that my writing is crap, I hereby resolve to give up all that bullshit programming that was shoved up my arse and just live up to my potential. Just do it. Isn't it time you did too?
