SUNDAY SLOWDOWN | Creative Muse - Yoko Ono
"Art is my life and my life is art."
- Yoko Ono
This month, I'm taking a cue from some of my favorite creative muses. In my early years, Yoko Ono was often labeled as being quite controversial. I now see through my own lens, which has changed as I have learned to discern from what was merely put on the plate before me. I've come to know her more personally through her writing, her poetry, her minimalist line art drawings, but most of all, her present point of view.
Yoko Ono is a woman who dared to live out loud. She was unafraid to be misunderstood. Or, perhaps she was, but she showed up anyway. And like many creatives, she was simply doing and acting in ways that she felt she must somehow express.
Adulthood is the great gift of choosing what we believe. It's also a responsibility. To allow the humanness of our differences. The past has a way of redeeming us. We change with age. It's the beauty of becoming who we were always meant to be. Perhaps becoming more insightful, coming to our senses that our point of view is not the only one that matters, that our opinion is just that, a point of view with the information we have at hand, or choose to believe or read. Maturity, and our humanity, is about recognizing our oneness, those universal truths that are not dependent upon or defined by mere opinion.
"Art is my life and my life is art."
For me, these words read like a talisman we can carry into our everyday. They remind us that there is no separation between making art and living art. A compass that turns us toward a more intentional way of being, of creating a life that resembles art. And, as we all know, art is also subjective. Art can be misunderstood. It can be one person's awe and another's dismay. At the end of day, how does it stack up with the authenticity and elegance of who you are, who you wish yourself to become, the life you dare to live. Imagination. Fascination. Courage.
When we live this way, art is not something we merely observe in a gallery. It's the ordinary made extraordinary in our everyday lives. Through intention, awareness and action. When we give ourselves permission to create the life we want live, in the intimate spaces of everyday living, when allow something greater than ourselves to come to us and through us, we begin to live from a place of true surrender. A place that looks and feels like a work of art.
This week, I'm going to carry Yoko Ono's words in my pocket like a polished stone. A reminder that everything rough and imperfect can be smoothed into beauty when we give it our devoted attention, a consistent gentle touch.
X Alisa
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