What Tomorrow Brings…
I find myself constantly caught in the pause of life these days, carefully deciding what the next move should be. The next note in the song. The next sculpture. The next anything.
This pause, I suppose, should be filled with rest—a feeling into the next moment so that it can arrive effortlessly. Yet the fear of making another uncalculated mistake seems to overwhelm me, leaving me apprehensive about moving forward at all. I find myself afraid of making the wrong choice, and in that fear, I become stuck.
Tomorrow is a big word. Today is enough.
I believe Emerson said something to the effect of: at the end of the day, be done with it and throw it down. I may be misremembering the exact words, but the sentiment has stayed with me. Living faithfully within each moment is critical to the evolution of the next one.
Sometimes I feel that writing about these things publicly can help both myself and others move through moments when each day seems tinged with a little more fear than the one before. When I return to art, it should be a refuge. Yet it carries the same emotional charge, and I cannot help but allow that feeling to pass through each work.
As I gaze into the emotive essence of a simple owl, I can see more than I could before. Its face becomes tainted with my own.
There is a secret that seems to reveal itself when I furiously pour over the articles and epiphanies of quantum physicists describing their experiments. I will only touch on it in the lightest way here, but perhaps it reveals something that should be clearer than ever in today’s world.
And here it is:
We think, and so we are.
Imagine that your future self is looking back at the person you are today, just as your present self looks back upon the person you once were. What would your future self say to you? Who is to know which version of yourself is the truest one?
What does seem apparent, however, is that whichever self you choose to become—or even to pretend to be—affects all of them.
In some real way, we are constantly affecting every other version of ourselves, whether we think of the past, the future, or even the present. None of them may be as fixed as we imagine. All are in flux. All can be moved.
Perhaps reality jumping is real, but that is another subject entirely.
Regardless of this jargon—impossible to completely wrap one’s head around—what seems clear enough is that we can begin writing the book of today by deciding what our future self will say about our current self. In doing so, we may open doors that the present self could never have imagined were there.
And what does that future self look like for an artist like me?
I have sold myself on the idea that I can make an influence through the mediums of art. I believe in a future where we value one another’s presence and time more than any other commodity. I believe our physical presence is merely an inkling of the emotional power we possess to unlock love in all its facets—to open our arms toward God more fully than any clergy or politician could ever promise us.
Our friendship with the world is the first step toward repairing the boundaries we have crossed. We must make amends with the creatures of the forest, because our relationship with them is perhaps most clearly reflected in the disharmony we have with ourselves.
I believe the world will one day vibrate with true colours and patterns unlike anything we could ever remember—despite the fact that they were always right in front of us.
We simply never had the eyes to see them.
This is my journal log for the day, spelled out plainly and without hesitation. I hope you find some truth in it. I hope something in it resonates with you.
