Canvas

“Tears teach us what needs to be released.”

Who here has visited a museum lately? 

Before this eternal masterpiece, I sat and let the visuals permeate my entire being?  After a while you see then feel the master’s work come into you.  A sensation that has persisted the relentless destruction of time. It is just you and the distillation of truth and beauty that hangs before you.  

Absorbed at that moment, I remembered that through x-ray technology modern curators have discovered that some of the masters re-used their canvas’s.  Does not that make you wonder?  What is buried beneath the masterpiece that we now see?  For although we awed by the master’s work, we are ignorant of what came before, what lies beneath.

That knowledge exploded an epiphany that caused the blood to rush from my face.  

You see, I was an angry child that grew into anger young man.  My father’s legacy was that men never cried. I learned young never to cry.  I would fight rather than back down or be bullied.  I would fight until I either left boasting or bloodied. 

And I would not cry. No, never cry. Never back down.

Was it my tolerance for pain or my stubborn defiance never to be a victim?  Eventually, my foolish fearlessness never to back down morphed into my unflinching ability to look long and hard at what others would avoid. 

A decent society would turn their heads when a drug-addled homeless would walk by, but for me, it was a sign of cowardice to look away.  I would study their weather-worn visages, their grime encrusted finger their unsteady stager and their peculiar aroma.  Never look away from these societal roadkills.  Never look away from my bloodied face.

Never look away, never back down from the decay and the dirt of society.  I grew hard, grew alone.  I kept my emotional distances.

Until the simplest of things whacked my fragile world off its unreachable shelf.

I was running a 10k down in Chula Vista.  I was on pace for a personal best.  When I rounded the corner and came stride for stride with a wheelchair participant.  His arms expanded and contracted like the breathing bag they attempted to resuscitate my grandfather just before he died.  His gloved hands showed the absorption of his bloody blistered hands, but his face showed pride, not pain.  My feeble “All right man” as I passed him was returned with a smile and a nod of appreciation.

Thank god the sweat would hide my tears. Tears that no blow to my body had ever elicited.  Tears for the power of that man’s human spirit.  The spirit to knock down the gates of hell.  The courage to rattle the gates of heaven.  A man that had repainted his life after the loss of his legs with a spirit and a truth that illustrated his new masterworks.  A masterpiece on wheels for all of us to see. A snapshot of what we can accomplish, what we can overcome. 

I began to repaint my world.  I began to observe my anger with the same unflinching vision that I had cast outward. I now looked deep within and discovered the societal roadkill that lurked inside.  I could now heal my scares with this newfound courage of introspection. This light allowed me to improve and learn to emotionally connect.

I am just a work in progress; we are all just unfinished masterpieces.  With each stroke of the brush, we create anew and forever alter the canvas of our lives.  We paint with a palette of pleasure and pain.  Our life is a single canvas that contains layers upon buried layer of past works. All incarnations include flaws.  All of our masterpieces encapsulate the weight of our darkness and the lightness of our spirit. 

As our masterworks hang before us, try hard not to look away.  Our flaws contain a unique power. Once observed they empower us to pick up the brush again and toil to repaint a new masterwork.

Sitting in the museum, with past master’s work before me, I know that everyone I meet is a work in progress that is captured again and again on that solidary canvas.