Movement

Misguided. Lost. Searching.

How much of our day is spent deciding what the next step will be, how much of my time is wasted planning, pacing, perusing my options....

A few months ago, I was having a conversation with another of the beautiful people in my life. This particular friend had recently attended an art exhibit where a painter had come up with an unusual concept: A Blank Canvas.

Stupid right? That's not art.

And yet...

As my friend explained to me, that white square represents something deeper. That white square represents our lives. You can paint anything on it - any colour, any pattern, any idea. And so the artist, like so many of us, remains paralyzed in the face of the endless possibilities. Unable to move forward for fear of painting the 'wrong thing' for fear of making that white endless everything into nothing. Or at least the wrong something.


Today, that white square screams to me. Where do I go from here?

Surrounded by the most beautiful world I have ever known, I awake each morning to comfort and clean sheets, to the sounds of birds singing in the cherry trees outside my bedroom window. I turn on my coffee machine and the kitchen fills with the smells of western warmth.

I turn on my computer - one of the two I have, one for work and one for play. I turn on the lights. I turn on the music, the heat, I sit on my couch and eat my fresh fruit and museli as I compulsively switch from one song to the next in search of the notes that will get my day going.

Excess.

I check my email. A note in my inbox from a friend on the other side of the world. A friend who works in the streets of Kolkata each day, believing that some things can be changed.

A friend who has decide what to paint on her canvas.

Hers is painted the ruby reds and peacock blues of India. The gold and black of the Kali temples, the yellows and greens of saris and rice paddies. She has chosen to spend her days battling for justice in a world where justice doesn't have carry the same meaning as it does here.

She has chosen.

And I sit here in my complex web of western guilt, my comfortable little home where everything is clean and I feel entitled not to choose anything. My white world that never demands a choice.

Paralyzed in the face of endless possibilities.