Art by Charlie Mackesy
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you
wanted to paint a rosy picture, then someone threw gloom all over your pretty
watercolor?
Not into watercolors? Well, I’m not talking about them
anyway, I’m talking about how people get beaten down by the complexity of life.
And there is that person standing in front of you venting,
complaining about how bad it is, and you stand there wondering how to maintain
a happy medium—listen to them, calm their fears, yet save your own sanity.
You can walk away, but if the voice you hear is coming
from the earth--it’s coughing, from the marketplace--its yammering, from the
military--its booming, from the deranged people that are doing bad things, or
from people who have given up hope, you can’t walk away.
James Fenimore Cooper said,“To find the medium takes some share of wit,
so tis a mark fools seldom hit.”
But we’re not fools, and we are making a momentous try
to follow the Hippocratic oath, “First do no harm.”
Second, we’re searching for answers on how to clean up
the messes we’re already made.
It astounds me when I look into technology. My14-year-old grandson knows more about scientific concepts I don’t even know the meaning of,
like nanotechology, quarks, blending, fractals, see, what in the heck?
Look at
the wiring of the space capsule and you wonder how in the world they can ever
untangle that spaghetti of wiring, and now instead of wires, it's done with Micro
chips soldered into little boards. Those microchips have so much information packed
into them it reminds me of the old argument, “How many angels can stand on
the head of a pin?” Now they would say, “How many bits of information can you
stack onto a microchip?”
If we have people within our culture who understand such
technology, then we have people who can understand at an earth level, how
to address global warming, how to grow healthy food, how to teach people to be
kind, and there are those who will teach us that we came here for a reason,
that we have a gift to give, and that the world needs that gift.
Look-it there at all that talent going
to waste.
We're so into comparing ourselves to others, believing
the dribble that many are called few are chosen, meaning try as you might, you
probably won’t make it (artists, writers, painters, musicians). Get a job.
(Contribute to another’s dream instead of having your own.)
Don’t listen to them.
Give your gift.
You are what the world needs.
I so love Charlie Mackesy's artistry that I had to buy his book, The Boy, the mole, the fox and the Horse. What wit, wisdom.
"The world that I am required to inhabit is this one, but the world that I long to inhabit is the one that Charlie Mackesy has created."
--Elizbeth Glbert