Things To Be

For JOURNAL 52 this week, the prompt is: 

"Think about the word 'being' and what it means to you.  This might mean being yourself and what makes you who you are, the things you do, or being present in the moment."

Here's what I came up with:

That clean water jar is a lie...I washed it just for you!

When I thought about this prompt, I knew pretty quickly what direction I wanted to go as far as the art went...

A little closer...this one is the most true to color...

...it would fit right in with my all-things-fauna theme I've got going so far this year... (I really hope insects count as 'fauna'...I mean, they're not 'flora', so they've got to be the other one, right?  That's what I'm going with anyway...)

"The best things to be: patient, smart, brave, kind."

I knew I wanted to draw a bee and have his black (thorax?) lines be words instead of just lines.  I felt like that was a pretty cool idea...

I do think he looks more like some sort of crazy wasp than a bee though...I think it's the crazy colors that make him more waspish...especially the green wings.  And possibly the blue-instead-of-black stripes...  But I do like the bright colors!

I wanted to make the letters really fat so that from farther away it would be hard to tell that they were words instead of stripes...which I think I succeeded at.  Unfortunately,  poor 'patient' is a little hard to read...I think it looks like it says 'pazzeni', which I don't think is really a word...but lets lie and call it Italian for 'patient', ok?  

Actually, if you took out the 'e' and 'n', it would be "pazzi" which actually is an Italian word...it means 'crazy'.  I only found that out when I googled 'pazzeni' just to make sure it wasn't some sort of foreign swear word...  It was a funny coincidence, because 'crazy' is a pretty accurate description of me, so whether you choose to read it as 'patient' or crazy, it's still true...

I tried to pick words for my bee's butt lines that describe what I am now in a small way, but also what I hope to practice this year.  "Being" is a verb, and (if elementary school English lessons aren't failing me) verbs are action words.  

I know a lot of people say the term as a kind of acceptance word...like "being present in the moment" or "just be"...which makes me think of a sort of stillness.  

I look at it more like this: "I am being patient/smart/brave/kind."  I think of it as practice...and once I practice enough, then I will actually become those things.  I will be able to say honestly that "I am brave/smart/patient/kind."...instead of just acting that way.

I like to think that at times I am all of those things...but not always.  I don't always make smart decisions...I'm not always brave enough to act...I don't always have kind thoughts...I'm not always patient as a saint.  And no one is going to always be those things...but I'd like to be those things more often.

I think that emotional and mental progress is kind of like trying to swim upstream...if you don't keep kicking, the current will pull you back to where you started!  It's not good to tread water too much, instead you've got keep moving forward, little by little, to get to where you want to be.

That's why I want to keep practicing 'being' until, one day, I just am.