One day in a guise of Indie: how I changed my personality
- Anastasiia Shkuro
- Apr 13, 2016
- 4 min read
One day in a guise of Indie: how I changed my personality
They say, it is impossible to change personality in one day. However, a day in life is enough to alter direction of thoughts. The main discovery of the day I am going to describe is quite simple. One needs a certain degree of courage and recklessness to stay independent and create what he wants.
When a creator shares his intention to draw, write or even perform in the theatre, he comes with hurdles. Relatives or friends warn: ‘You will not earn money and die in poverty’, ‘How could you withstand competition?’, ‘Nobody is interested in what you are doing’. Such words are usually told to protect a creator from the possible failures; however, they destroy a natural appetency to be yourself. If we look at the international art history, we may find that all the masterpieces have been created for the soul of artist, not for the ego of society.
…This breathtaking day started when I found out a challenging motivational technique. I should have written a list consisting of twenty things I loved doing and near each point I put the last date when I did it. It was rather shocking to see that I had not done the majority of acts for a couple of years. Then I decided to write a reason why I stopped certain activity only to find out the saddest truth about myself. We ‘consume’ what we hear — this is how I gave up singing after the criticism of my friend; stopped playing piano after some rude commentaries and refused to dance dedicating free time to high-paid work instead. By the way, work which I preferred to dance classes was likely to transform my life into two-month hell which I could hardly escape from. The same situation happened with the skating ring and stretching — two sports activities I admired the most.
That time I recalled a wise legend written by cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien. In shamanic societies people visited special healers to get rid of depression. Shamans asked patients the following questions. When did a human stop dancing? When did one forget about curing power of dances? When did a person perceive story-telling as a boring activity? When did one stop enjoying silence? Indeed, singing, dances, soul-gripping stories and pleasant silence are the best medicine because a person stops being afraid of creative independency.
‘You are not a child anymore, think seriously, leave leisure activities and work hard’ – this is what we hear everyday. However, none of people supporting such ideas do bother how to make us happier. So, the next activity I did the day described was devoted to the psychological work with negative confirmation stuck into my brain. I wrote down all the numerous fears I had and all the unpleasant words I heard. Afterwards, in front of each point of the list I explained why exact fear or self-deprecating phrases were only an illusion. The next step moving me closer to independent personality touched my dreams. What could I go if it weren’t fantastic? Definitely, I could draw amazing pictures, learn Spanish, become an actress, work as a model and start making toys… The list was quite long and diverse, and its visible nature helped me to understand: there is nothing unreal in what I want. All the obstacles I imagined were only in my brain.
If happiness was the national currency, what would you do for a living? — having asked myself such a question, I decided to act. I lived one day completely trusting to my feelings and surrounding world. To tell the truth, I had a big obstacle — as my work is connected with writing, I perceive the world with the help of words and verbal images. But visual perception has never been my strong suit. For instance, I always struggled matching colors and creating composition pattern construction. I just had no ideas what to paint and in which way; consequently, I persuaded myself I could not draw. So, I did spend the rest of the day in an unusual manner.
For the first three hours I tried to live as if I savored surrounding beauty only with the help of eyes. I visited decorative shops, selected textiles, admired childish toys. I noticed familiar lines of the streets, took a lot of photos and at the end of three-hour trip sat on the bench and, looking to the landscape, opened a copy-book and started drawing.
The next several hours were dedicated to the acoustic perception. I listened to the sounds of scorching cars and differed people’s intonations and pitches of the voices. That moment I invented an exciting game of observation the pitches of human voices — I paid attention only to the sounds ignoring words. Sometimes people are so busy arguing and expressing their opinion that they rarely give ear to the voice of a talker. As we know, the words may lie, but the inner being expressed in subtle things never have the laugh on you.
Returning home, I felt two burning desires — to compose music and paint pictures. So, I opened the piano and started playing; after that I looked at all the photos taken and quite quickly understood which composition I needed for my picture. Now I am sure: once we open ourselves to the natural resources and appreciate the colors of life, our hearts open and allow us to create.
As one of old philosophers told, we are not humans achieving spiritual experience but, instead, we are spiritual beings getting human experience. Spiritual essence wants to be reflected in the pictures, books, or beautiful performances. Actually, reality helps us once we articulate our desire, but it is so important not to be afraid of dreaming…
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