Big Little Words
Posted: Tuesday, September 16, 2008
by Laura Lavigne
TreeHouse Coaching
A few years ago, I found myself in an unlikely setting.
It was an early Wednesday morning and I was standing in front of an easel in the middle of a large, airy art studio. Classical music was softly playing, my cell phone was turned off and I was embarking on a three-hour art class. I knew no one in the room and no one knew me. I was completely out of my element and yet something was slowly bubbling up in me, little tendrils of quiet, private giddiness that were beginning to wrap themselves around the crevices of my mind.
How I got there in the first place is not all that interesting but I will say that it was part of Operation Going Back to School. In short, a 5-credit art class was available and I thought it sounded more exciting than chemistry. Nothing more. Or rather, nothing more that I was ready to admit.
So. It is Wedenesday morning and I am standing in front of an easel. I am not driving kids to school, I am not taking client calls, I am not cleaning my house, I am not doing anything productive at all. The best part, possibly is that no one can easily get a hold of me (hey, the instructor said “turn off your cell phones.")
Wow.
After a series of pleasingly strange exercises involving the ripping of large sheets of paper while not looking at our hands, the teacher asked us to grab some brushes and a little bit of ink. A male model was posing on a little platform and she instructed us to dip our brush in the ink and “produce a very quick gesture line."
It was an early Wednesday morning and I was standing in front of an easel in the middle of a large, airy art studio. Classical music was softly playing, my cell phone was turned off and I was embarking on a three-hour art class. I knew no one in the room and no one knew me. I was completely out of my element and yet something was slowly bubbling up in me, little tendrils of quiet, private giddiness that were beginning to wrap themselves around the crevices of my mind.
So. It is Wedenesday morning and I am standing in front of an easel. I am not driving kids to school, I am not taking client calls, I am not cleaning my house, I am not doing anything productive at all. The best part, possibly is that no one can easily get a hold of me (hey, the instructor said “turn off your cell phones.")
Wow.
After a series of pleasingly strange exercises involving the ripping of large sheets of paper while not looking at our hands, the teacher asked us to grab some brushes and a little bit of ink. A male model was posing on a little platform and she instructed us to dip our brush in the ink and “produce a very quick gesture line."
Within one second my mind went both blank and somehow on fire.
The feeling of the brush in my hand brought me back twenty years ago at time when I was a make up artist and spent most of my days on photography and movie sets. A brush was intimately familiar, then, almost like an intrinsic link between my brain and my body. The memory came as a sharp surprise in which I had no time to indulge. We had 20 seconds to make our mark. So I did. I let my hand take over as my eyes enveloped the form of the model’s body. It lasted an instant and it lasted forever. The moment felt enormously heavy and definitely light. Really, it felt like home.
And then BAM! Reality came crashing down as I heard my instructor’s voice, very close to my ear.
She said one word.
“STOP."
As you know, there is no lower low than the one that comes after a high.
After having glimpsed at a magical land filled with a heady blend of peace and aliveness, I knew right there and then that it was time to move out. I knew that I had been busted; that I had no right to be standing in an art studio on a Wednesday morning, impersonating some aspiring artist. That I had no talent and that I had been found. Somewhere deep down I could hear a voice laughing cruelly and rolling its eyes in a patronizing way. I think it said something like “who the heck do you think you are?"
I put my brush down and for the first time took a look at my paper. Before my own judgment could even say anything, my instructor spoke again. She said:
“it’s beautiful."
It is not easy to make my words convey what happened for me, at that moment. It was a blend of so many different feelings, thoughts, voices. One main voice – possible mine – was aware that something important was happening, that some truth was asking for attention. Something was very, very right.
As cliché as it sounds, my life, from that morning on, has not been the same.
My teacher’s words had just begun to pry open a door for me. I chose to open it fully. I chose to step to the other side and to explore what lived beyond. There, I found a big, colorful world. A world where there is so much to learn and so many beautiful ways to do so; so many wonderful people to meet, too. A world where I get to live even more fully and where I get to explore new pieces of me and of others.
Within days, I had changed my major and within weeks I had earned my first award; within months I held my first art show and sold my first piece. Within a few more months, I got to experience the delightfully nerve wracking jitters of creating my first commissioned piece. And because who we truly are is rarely isolated, I am now able to include the huge therapeutic value of art in my coaching. I get to share this gift - and my toys – with my clients as they, also, come find peace, relief, joy in my art studio.
That is a whole lot of good. And all of it because of a few words, kindly and simply spoken.
I hope to never let art move out of my life again or rather I hope to know better than to let myself move out of It.
Mostly, I hope to never forget how the power of just a few words of appreciation can change someone’s life.
So, today, I invite you to join me in making sure to not let those words live in our minds, only.
When we feel appreciation, let us speak it, simply and clearly. There is no limit to how much good we can create by living this way.
When we feel appreciation, let us speak it, simply and clearly. There is no limit to how much good we can create by living this way.
And creating, I am pretty sure, is what we are meant to do.
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