A Tether

Challenging.

Sometimes, that word is covered in oil.

Life is hard - let’s not mince words. We come in with a pot of energy we don’t know how to hold or spend or invest. Our influences are outside of us, we think, and we put our faith in them.

The outer world offers playthings and distractions that can be completely absorbing. But you can reach a point of inaction that stems from having thoroughly experienced the same outcome from prior choices. The rat race, some call it. Others assert it’s a wheel of fortune and we have no hope. But we can recognize the stopping place where the big questions grow, and then allow ourselves to stay there for a bit. A pause here becomes opportunity, and this opportunity is simply to allow that there could be something on offer that is beyond what we understood to be available in the outer world. We could have an outcome that would be new and untested, the result of choosing differently.

The outer world remains and we still must live in it and attend to the choices we’ve already made.

You’ve heard the idea that insanity is repeating identical behavior and expecting a different result. We forget that we can try a different key if we’d like. Among the countless choices in the outer world, a higher choice is present but not always obvious.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

King James Bible, Letter of Paul to the Galatians, 6:7.

A Tether, 24” x 18”, 2005-2022, was painted in oil on glue-chalk gesso over glue size on cradled hardboard panel.