Heart and Intuition by Mae Chevrette via Pinterest
Day 6 – A – Z Challenge
“It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires.”― Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Second star on the right, straight on ’til morning.
One of my favorite movies is the Johnny Depp/Kate Winslet film, Finding Neverland, with the wonderful child actor, Freddie Highmore.
The film’s about J. M. Barrie’s experience of writing and staging ‘Peter Pan’ in London, after encountering a family who inspired the story.
It’s about magic, dreams, childhood, life, death, loss, heartbreak, and redemption.
It’s about finding a tribe of souls who know you when they meet you.
As an artist, finding that sort of ‘Neverland’ is life-changing. It saves you.
Finding the arms of those who ‘get you,’ is akin to finding home after years of homelessness.
If you believe…
All artist are, by nature, outsiders.
We tend to be a solitary bunch, sitting scribbling (painting, dancing, quilting) in our rooms, largely oblivious to the outside world if we are in a state of flow.
We fall through the page and wander far away from wherever we are now, having adventures, sorting things out, finding treasure, and chatting with imaginary friends (and enemies). To anyone who doesn’t travel in these realms, we can come off as dreamy (positive spin), spaced-out (negative spin), or just plain crazy. (That’s just mean).
Most of the time, those assumptions don’t even register with us.
Whatever, dude.
We’re happily creating in the cozy imaginary rooms of our minds.
The Company of Strangers…
But sometimes, we can’t find our tribe.
We can’t find anyone like us. We feel a bit like the Little Prince in St. Exupery’s famous story of the same name. We’re sitting on a planet all alone with nothing but a rose and a tiny fox to keep us company.
We wonder about our sanity and figure that we are alone because our strangeness is off-putting. We feel like a bad smell in a cramped room.
Image by Lisa Congdon via Pinterest
However, one day (one in a thousand-thousand days) we stumble across a kindred spirit.
It’s You! we think. You’re like me.
(And they think the same thing.)
We recognize the weird wonderfulness immediately. We fit together, like a lock and key.
And suddenly, we have a confidant. We have a sounding board.
We have a mirror for the first time.
We realize that the world is peppered with freaks and geeks and seekers.
Just. Like. Us.
The Dark Night is Over…
It’s a joyous feeling, this reunion with like-minded souls.
And even if we’ve been alone for a long-ass time, it suddenly feels as though we’ve always known each other.
We’ve found home.
We’ve found that one nest, that one spot in the universe that lets us be us.
And it feels good.
© 2015 Shavawn M. Berry All rights reserved
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