Pursuits

Today I shall write about my pursuits. It has been a turbulent life changing three years of my life, and I'm nearing the end of a major chapter of my life.

As going into the nitty gritty details of my personal struggles call for compromising the privacy of people and situations I shall be writing of the lessons learned and the new goals that I have churned out.

In six months time I shall be stamped with a doctorate. Yes, I'm a proud daughter and a prouder granddaughter. (Beams).

Dreams and love travel through time and worlds. The dreams of our ancestors are sometimes realized through us. PhD I believe, is my father's dream that I am taking to fruition.

It was a time of great changes in personal life. I've pushed my emotional limits, tested it multiple times, gotten hurt and stood tall. I've seen my goals take shape into reality, through hard work. What once seemed doubtful, I realized. Those once seemed superior became equals or inferiors. The people I saw with awe turned into what I can also be.

My grandfather went to rest with God and I'm sure he is going to be too proud of me when I get the degree. Yes I did it myself. In 3.5 years that is.

I had applied for a Masters course but my interview went so well that they pushed me for PhD. I got multiple professors calling me after the interview to join their labs. Choosing my guide was intuition, which later proved to work well for me.

I'm a person of free style. And I get plenty of freedom in my lab, with no time restrictions, no explicit problems to work on and the freedom to sing, dance, paint if the nature calls(winks).

I've mastered basic French. I've started a fitness regime. I've made awesome friends.

I've visited three countries - Qatar, France and USA to present my works at conferences there.

During these years I've taken the uncertainties in full swing. There was my family fervently pushing me for marriage and groom hunting. There were some who thought I would settle with MSc if I get set with a proposal. There were people who doubted me, those who tried to pull me from behind.

I had great moments from family. Many ways I knew how deep the love was. I have got amazing friends who supported me once instance at a time.

Choosing your battles

My dear love

Today I shall share with you the most wonderful and liberating truth that has dawned upon me over the past two years. Brace yourself, to soak in the rhapsodies of life wisdom that I'm going to flood you with.

We come across different types of people in our lives, of different ethnicity, educational, cultural backgrounds, different age groups - different everything. Many a time we have to interact with someone we are not used to. The best thing about the world is that it is full of people you do not know and are not used to. So when you interact with them, its like having an all new color added to your palette, or maybe a whole new instrument to your orchestra, that you do not know how to put use.

I shall take you to my imaginary world. A world where the colors and instruments have a conscience and have a soul. So I want to paint a beautiful picture. I have my palette ready and started painting , pouring my heart and soul into my creation. Now there are some colors I prefer not to use. I know they are ugly and if I touch my brush onto them the other parts of my painting would lose their innate aesthetic appeal and as a painter I do not want to risk it. But, my colors have a soul, a conscience, a voice. And that conscience is good enough for them to make unncessary clatter. The black knows, its ugly, its too much to fit into my painting. The taupe and grey know they have no place in my painting. But they sceam to get in. Try to find their place even if they make the painting look ugly.

They scream, shout, even beg to take themselves in. At times you see them fighting among themselves to get the better place in your painting. At times you see them getting a peek of your beautiful work in progress , re-evaluating themselves for a better canvas space, a better brush stroke.

There can be the black who is very adamant. It can even treat the painting as his own as he believes so , because the outline was made using black. And somehow the mighty black has got the know-it-all and I'm it all attitude plugged in its head that it wants its place withing my painting. It is very adamant and demanding, often fighting for a place. Who can convince the black that its place is on the outlines, outlines are where it fits well and not withing the painting, my painter sits disheveled.

There are others, like that grey, who cunningly jumped onto my brush while I was mixing from the red palette. There is the Russian violet bottle that tried to spill onto my painting. And there was this ugly fight that broke off between navy blue and crimson. Hell...., wait there you two!!

The painter me is kind of fed up. I see my beautiful sketch in the verge of being torn apart. I doubt if I can cover up that spilled ink. I wonder how I am going to fit that black and grey! Afterall, they are colors with souls, who wouldn't rest till they win their point. I contemplate on fighting with them, I know that the power of an artist's conscience always overpowers that of paints. But I know that the perfection conceived in my inner eye is unknown and unreachable to my paints and there is no use blaming them.

Battling with them is an option, I can win fair and square, but there it would leave me drained and uneasy once the fights are over. It would demand a rest period until my next creation and a sense of overwhelming creative fatigue that might as well out-pour into my other creative pursuits.

So as a seasoned artist, I choose to go with the conscience of my paints. To allow them into my canvas. To validate them, to make them feel important in their own pleasing ways. Now, what about that perfection, that beautiful sketch that you conceived within? I have my say, I paint well, I have filled the canvas myself, but with the difference that now I have included those battling paints as well. Well, I have included them like how they wanted to be included. I didn't force black to the outline, I let  it into the canvas so that it can feel peace within. I allowed the crimson to find its place with a strong brush stroke down the one-third of the canvas. Likewise, I found each of them a place in my painting.

Now, you see I battled none, but I won them all. What about my painting?

Well, I'm still painting. I tell you I paint beautifully and make excellent strokes, the best choice of colors with a profound sense of aesthetics. But now I know that the skill of an artist is not in painting his perfect imagery. It is about giving voice to the soul of every color  in her palette, who aspired for a worthy  place in her painting. And now, the painting has an unfathomable sense of inclusiveness and a great beauty that comes with it where all the colors feel satisfied within themselves, in their own stories, in their own tiny little worlds.

When a  master painter is painting, his creation can encompass them all, in perfect harmony with zero animosity. And that is what a novice must strive for. The pursuit of perfection comes not in the achievement of perfection that you conceive within yourself.

Perfection comes along the way when you learn to encompass what you don't know, what you don't want and what you are not yet aware of. Perfection is that ultimate love where you have befriended every color in your palette and have found each of them a righful place in their own might, within your canvass. Perfection is when you do not resent the black or grey rather appreciate the beauty of their personal stories and existence, including them in your canvas.

It takes greater character to tolerate imperfections than to resent them . And I tell you, these imperfections are your perceptions. Once the artist matures, he reaches that pinnacle of creativity where he touches that God self, that omniscient and omnipotent love that ensues from this paintings is what the artist contributes to the world.

The greater the love, the better his painting.

Lov and Hugs
mmeeee