June 2

Emerging Courageous Online Magazine - Stories

Life is my Friend by Gloria Wachtel

Recently, I had a marvelous insight into my belief about life. For years, the picture that I had of life was that “life sucks”. No matter how hard I tried to control things life seemed to always come in and mess things up for me. Then one beautiful day, as I sat in tune with nature, listening and watching birds flying around the lake water, I wondered if I could invent a new picture about life. I sat there for quite some time trying to come up with positive words to describe my new belief about life. This took some time to do.

Then an interesting thing happened, I made a connection between how I approach life and how I approach art making. Thinking about both of these issues made me realize that I approach life and I approach my art work the same way. There have been many times in life and many times creating art when at the beginning I would struggle and demand that life and my materials do what I wanted them to do. I wanted my own way. Because the dialogue was none existing between us, I struggled and fought to have things my way. I thought I knew what was best for me. At some point, something would happen and I would miraculously stop fighting and stop trying to control the situation. It was only then that an honest and truthful dialogue would begin between life, my materials and me. This cooperation between life and art and me resulted in great success that produced peace, harmony, and acceptance of the new direction in my life and art.

It is a very strange feeling to experience me wanting my way so badly that I would continue fighting even thought without success; then to finally stop fighting and to finally trust that someone greater than me is in charge of my life and someone greater than me is in charge of my creative abilities. My new belief about life has changed from the old belief that “life sucks” to my new vision that life [she] welcomes me in with open arms that nurture, love, care, and comfort me. Life is my friend and lover who only wants what’s best for me. This new belief gives me peace knowing that life cares about me. She wants me to be happy, healthy, and fulfilled in a creative way. I know that bad things will continue to happen in life and that I will continue to fight life and my materials at first; but now I know not to worry because I have a healthy vision to fall back on in bad times.

Gloria Wachtel
[email protected]
June 2, 2003

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