Self-Definition: Choose Your Mirrors Wisely
An excerpt taken from Walking In This World by Julia Cameron:
“All of us are creative. Some of us get the mirroring to know we are creative, but few of us get the mirroring to know how creative. What most of us get is the worried advice that if we are thinking about a life in the arts, we’d better plan to have “something to fall back on.” Would they tell us that if we expressed an interest in banking?
It could be argued that as people and as artists, we are what we are- however, we also become ourselves, all of ourselves, by having our largeness mirrored back to us.
I think of a scene from the Disney version of Cinderella, when the heroine sees herself in the dress for the first time and realizes she is a beauty…There is a magical “click” of recognition when the looking glass says back,
Yes, we are what we dream.
Too often we lack such mirrors and such transforming moments. No magic wand taps our life to make us into what we dream. Like Rumpelstiltskin, the artist most frequently has to name himself.
“I am an artist”- a filmmaker, a composer, a painter, a sculptor, an actor, or something {a convivial woman}- something the outer world has yet to acknowledge.”
I’ve been considered the “Darlene” of my family– the eccentric, the odd woman out. I always laugh after taking a bow, because the idea appeals to me and I am similarly attracted to such people.
My freshmen year in high school, I was the girl wearing blazers, chokers with floral baby doll dresses and velvet platform shoes while the rest of the student body jumped on the saggy pants and over-sized starter jacket bandwagon. I was attracted to Luis, the handsome Puerto Rican with caramel-colored skin and green eyes. He wore Pearl Jam t-shirts and black combat boots to school and was made fun of by classmates, but I was quick to say, “Hellooo Eddie Vedder.”
Similarly, my freshmen year in college, I hung out with a revolutionary Che Guevara type. He debated the government and history teachers, walked the campus barefoot and loaned me his copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals book. He encouraged me to question things and always said, “You can’t fight your nature.” To this day, I still hear it when it’s time to trust my instincts and act. Although a very interesting time for me (and my parents!), the Chicana Feminist in me didn’t last, because I wasn’t about limiting myself to one worldview.
Being an American of Mexican and Spanish descent, with white skin and Cheryl for a name, I experienced constant pressure to define myself. I got the question all the time, “So, what are you?” I felt I had to prove my ethnicity and it became annoying, because I am not definable by race, religion, culture, language, clothing labels, etc. I am simply me and trying to express that everyday.
Now when it comes to the writer in me and I experience rejection or am misunderstood, or worse of all, when my inner mean girl tries to break my self-confidence, this quote by Paulo Coehlo comforts and gets me through,
When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.
There is resistance when it comes to eccentricity, hence the reason to choose your mirrors wisely. Who do you think you are wanting to write? To influence? To speak? To lead? Find the people who are going to encourage that side of you and bring it out. It’s about an experience of learning to go from doing as others do to simply being who you are. Peer pressure doesn’t end in high school.
I’ve taken a few detours, felt lost many times, but as Julia Cameron says, I had this deep inner knowing to express myself in my own way, to serve the world in some other form, the way I was meant to do it. Charles Darwin ain’t the only one exercising the theory of evolution.
This life is ever changing and I am following its lead.
I am experimenting with various energies- whether it be people, places, sounds or material things. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it is to dabble in this or that and not claim any of it as my own, because it’s just an experience.
I make mistakes and am learning not to be so hard on myself as the Virgo in me tends to want to do. I get easily distracted, struggle to focus and exercise more discipline with my body and time, and I experience doubt in myself, but the more I live, the more I heal and that is oh so liberating!
Believe in yourself and your gifts, then give them away. All that’s left to do is heed the words of Seth Godin and “fail fast.”
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