How Sweet A Sorrow Success...

"It's amazing how people define roles for themselves and put handcuffs on their experience and are constantly surprised by the things a roulette universe spins at them..."  Terry Prachett

Sometimes Life's Not Fair

Yesterday I received the call that I had been moved from the wait list of a promising new show to the accepted category.  I was elated at the news, especially since the promotional company running the show has an exceptional reputation for events.  And yet it was also a bitter-sweet moment.  What cost success? I asked myself, not in terms of how the events of my life affect me but in the effects of my life on others.

Do my successes give other people hope and inspire them to continue forward in their own lives or do they hold the events of my life up in comparison with their own and get caught up in the differences?  Do hearing about the events in my life weigh them down or lift them up?

There are people in my life who, at least from the outside, appear to be, and profess to being, extremely frustrated by the direction their journeys have taken, by the list of tasks and objects they perceive to be in their way.  I sometimes wonder if my successes, achieved by actions motivated not by the head but by the heart, frustrate them to the point of despair.  Those with art degrees who struggle to create while I, in play and meditation, turn out breathtaking pieces.  Those with their rules and lists flounder while I float by. 

Intellectually I know that trying to help them into flow, into creativity, is about as helpful as trying to teach them to fly by picking themselves up by their shoelaces.  Flow and creativity are things that people have to come to from within, by finding their own path.  Am I helping to push them towards that creative epiphany or towards yet more despair and frustration?  And I find myself having to make a conscious effort to allow their frustration and despair to wash over me like salt water on glass, to not let them create for me a post around which my efforts would warp for other people can create immovable obstacles in our lives as easily as we can if we let them.

One of these people is about to have her 31st birthday this week.  She feels trapped in her current job and is allowing herself to be overwhelmed by the list of tasks from the head instead of allowing the heart to drive.  I haven't yet made the call to her to tell her my good news because I'm honestly concerned that hearing about my success would cause her more harm than good...

visit Samantha Byrnes' gallery online...