Blog

            Things happen in life, and they are either expected or unexpected. As children, pretty much everything seems mysterious to us, but gradually we learn about expectations that until we reach a level of awareness and understanding might simply be more unexpected surprises. We acclimate ourselves to the world and perhaps cruise along with day to day normalcy (which we learn from family, culture, the basis circumstance of our lives) until something unexpected occurs. We then adapt and assimilate that new experience or in some cases are wounded by it – the death of a pet, for example – and we adjust our lives to that event for better or worse. We learn about control, or the lack thereof, or better yet, the illusion of control. The process of adaptation is itself fraught with unexpected responses – there are many possibilities and so many variables, but as humans we attempt to minimize the uncontrollable in order to gain maximum control. All of that is but an illusion if we are truthful.

            Some part of us knows that nothing is truly predictable, nothing truly certain. It has almost become a cliché to suggest that anything could happen at any moment – the proverbial unseen bus, an errant meteorite, or an undetected physical flaw that does us in. The adaptive side of us exerts caution when necessary, triggers fight or flight when appropriate, or directs thinking to positive and productive considerations most of the other times lest we become consumed by fear of the unexpected.

            Religion, philosophy, and art all approach human psychological and emotional challenges in different ways. Sometimes there is overlap and sometimes complete agreement among these perspectives. We exhibit faith or doubt, confidence or uncertainty, diligence or hesitancy in all that we think and do. We celebrate that which brings life and positive energy and seek these things out. We tend to avoid the negative and the harmful. Because we are human and flawed, there can be a mixture of positive and negative while we still maintain emphasis on the positive. Aberrations do occur and we see darker elements manifest in our experience and our expression. Art and literature illustrate this range of complexity in stories and myths. More than a simple coping mechanism, our art is one of the powerful ways we have developed to understand what could otherwise be a hopeless situation filled with helplessness and vulnerability. We use art not only as a means for adapting to life but also as a means of triumphing in life while additionally creating a legacy that we pass down from generation to generation.