Give Up One Idea

No matter how much we plan we can never totally control how everything will work out in the end. Once we realize that things are not going as planned we have a options. Stop and start all over again. Get upset and toss what you have and give up. Or pause and think what could this be since it isn’t what we thought it would be?

I share this photo as it was an experiment in batik printing gone awry. I was testing how circles would look and didn’t like the way they were too crowded and incomplete, so what to do? The usual thought is to stop and do something else, in this case I decided to add more wax, more color, more elements. I paused and thought about how adding more would change everything, and it did. In the end all the wrong turned out right, but to get there I had to be open to completing it differently than I had first imagined.

Too many of us suffer from control issues and perfectionism, to the point that we find it hard to deal with the unknown. We get frustrated and overwhelmed when what we thought was our outcome turns into a mess. The happiest people I know are able to handle the unknown and see it as an adventure not a disappointment. Maturity comes when we know our limitations and are able to face them with confidence and pride. Knowing what we do well and being open to learning new things in order to navigate the unknown of the future helps prepare us for any outcome.

Being willing to acknowledge and participate in the unknown, the unfinished, the messy and the incomplete teaches us to expect the unexpected. When we learn to embrace the change and let go of our control issues we see different possibilities and live adventures we would never have been able to plan ourselves. Maybe your current mess is an open door to your greatest masterpiece, all you have to do is to be willing to give up one idea and head towards another.