You as Art

To be yourself in a world that is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else is the hardest battle any human being can fight. E.E. Cummings said this. He was a famous poet who left quite a legacy behind. He defied the conventional style of poetry and believed art reflected individuality and originality.

I believe all of us are a piece of art, a piece of poetry down to the cellular level. We are built up of tiny and complex atoms, and molecules. Something about our human design is original, and complex, just like art. I look at my boys and see art transform in front of my eyes every day. My youngest son is a ball of wildfire that is bright and happy most of the time, hard to tame, but always wanting to help, and remembering the little details in life that my oldest son and I forget quite often. He reminds me to stay present, but I know he will naturally evolve and change and show different dimensions, expressions and facets of who he is throughout his lifetime. My oldest son is quirky, introspective, intelligent, and sensitive. He has always asked deep philosophical questions since he was three years old. However, these are simple adjectives and examples that describe who he is, and there are levels of depth to him that he has yet to discover about himself.

The other day I was having a discussion about being true to yourself with my oldest son and he said, “Isn’t it funny how people tell you to be yourself, but then when you are, they judge you?” and he is right. It’s incredibly hard to stubbornly insist on being yourself in a world that will tell you that it is wrong. However, I think about all the great artists, novelists, songwriters, poets who were rejected for creating their own sense of style for expressing themselves as they were. What would have happened if E.E. Cummings did not stay true to his form of poetry? My guess is that some did not prefer him, or his style. But to those who could understand him, he likely opened up a whole new world of possibilities when it came to how poetry could be expressed. I think that’s how it is with us human beings. When one person is bold enough to be themselves in a world where people are telling them “they’re doing it wrong” yet they persist in holding onto their own individuality, their own inherent nature, they inspire others and show them that it really is okay to be who they are too, even if it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

It sure is a scary thing sometimes to be who you are. People will judge you, they will reject you, they will criticize you and tell you to do it another way and it’s easy to second guess yourself and wonder if something is really wrong with who you are. But I have learned in my own life, they’ll reject you anyways if you pretend you’re something you’re not. And as Edwin Elliot said, “By being yourself you put something beautiful into the world that was not there before.”