Art Is Your Birthright

Art is your birthright. Have you forgotten? 

I have forgotten no less than one thousand times, consumed with the busy tasks of a day and neglectful of the very existence of my soul. From our very origins, we have been creators. We have painted on the walls of caves, constructed our own clothing, and told stories around a fire. We found ways to make paint from the things which grew around us, to augment our own appearance as an expression of personal taste. Before we did many of the things we consider "human," we were artists.

Do you let yourself play piano anymore? Do you still write? Do you believe you are more than the sum of your professional parts, the total of your bi-monthly income?

Even now, art serves you. I suspect you don't suffer to find the proper word when constructing an email and I anticipate you are well-spoken when called on in meetings. Maybe sometimes you find yourself thinking of a funny prank or joke and find the small glint of a smile spread across your lips?

Art is our birthright. We are born to tap deeply into a well of expression and to make something fresh and new and intimate to us, even if it isn't anything very noble or beautiful. Creating something is the thing that matters. Giving birth to something that started as barely the whisper of an idea, of a drawing, of a story.

When we fall in love with one another, we are not falling in love with the accolades, achievements, awards, or credentials; when we look at a human and we burn desperately for them, we are falling in love with their fire, with their story, with their artistry. Unconditional love is not a business negotiation, but a work of the soul and the song we were born with (which we lived loudly as children, but seem to inevitably quiet with the passing of years).

Art is your birthright. Love is your birthright. Create something today that did not exist yesterday; it is your destiny to live a life more examined, more expressed, and more intricately projected than you believe. When you tap into art, you are tapping into your own humanity, your very existence, and you are reminded that while you are here temporarily, your home is actually amongst the stars.