permission to be - a photo on Flickriver

permission to be

            These are the three words most people I meet need to hear: You have permission.

We too often think we don't. It's like being locked in a room. We're so focused on the door with the giant padlock that we fail to notice the window that has been creaking open little by little behind us. 

All your life, people have told you no, in one way or another.

Don't be an artist, you won't make money.
Don't make art like that, no one will like it.
Don't pursue that passion, it isn't practical.

Even when every single person in your formative years tells you exactly what you need to hear - to go for it, that you'll succeed - we internalize the lessons of the world. We witness struggle and it's easier to assume we will, too, rather than believe we may be the one who overcomes.

Action is far more difficult than inaction. To take action and also be subversive, or divergent, or weird...a step beyond difficult.

But you have permission, all the same as I do, to subvert expectations and fail gloriously and succeed stubbornly. To pave the way for others to do the same.

If not you, who? We need more people to realize they had permission all along. That this one life is all we're guaranteed, and it begs us to act.

Create. Make. Express. Unapologetically and with exquisite joy.

"Permission to Be", self-portrait April 2024

Permission is the flower blooming
amidst the frost in early spring,
petals opening like arms, saying:
join me.

Taken on: April 15, 2024

Tags:

sony alpha

fine art

red umbrella

artist

permission

self portrait « less

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