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Knowingly or not, we all make choices in our lives that affect the way we live. Many are kinda forced on us. Some are even conscious. A few are deliberate.
I made a conscious choice rather early in my life. It happened after I had married and started a family, not the easiest of times. I had a very good position with a large company in the printing industry and it wasn't easy for my wife to agree to give that up. But agree she did and overnight I became a freelance commercial artist and, eventually, a gallery painter.
The life of an artist has given me a wonderful family. It has given me many temporary friends and a few lasting ones. It has shown me the beauty of sunsets and cold winter mornings. It has given me the time to actually "listen" to the sounds of wind in the leaves and lovers breathing. It has revealed fairies and fireflies and it has shown me that, in the end, everything is planned, that there is good in the world, that evil exists, and that it is solely up to each of us to know the difference and make the big choice.
However, and it's a big however, it has allowed me to pull back from the daily matrix most are lost in and take a good, hard look at the world. What I've seen is not pretty and that is the hardest part to deal with. Eventually it becomes too hard to ignore and we're forced to do something about it. In today's society, this can lead to a lonely life indeed.
Growing up is a never ending thing it seems, at least hasn't been for me. Sometimes it gets the best of me. Many years ago, shortly after I became a fulltime artist, I think more than 40, I wrote a simple little poem. It has turned out to be a prophecy of sorts.
Refusing to accept...
The choice of silence
is an arrogant refusal
to accept the world
as it is.
John Crittenden
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