If you are kind enough to read this column regularly, a message should come in: I am everywhere.
Which is not a surprise. We are everywhere. But no matter where we land, we all start from the same place.
A blank page.
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It’s there every week as I try to piece together some thoughts that might inspire or challenge you, or – my favorite – make you look at something you see every day in a new way.
Each week’s column is different, but each starts the same way. Empty white space on a blank page.
For a few weeks the blank page is like a reunion with an old friend. Another time it’s an irritable complainer who just wants me to go away and leave it alone.
I know that I am not unique. Every day we all face blank pages.
Every artist stares first at a blank canvas, and at this moment before the beginning, every artist is on an equal footing with Rembrandt and Van Gogh. It is only when we make the first stroke of the brush that the gap begins to appear.
But not only create artists. The craftsman looks at everything that can be found in a useful piece of wood. He knows it’s in there, waits for it to show up, and demands its release. And then he starts.
It’s actually a terrible thing to create. So much pressure to be true So much guilt for knowing that the imperfections in your work are your own doing, not in creation that you know is there, and waiting to be brought into our perfect light in our dark, petty world will.
Because it’s out there – all this power and beauty and depth and usefulness and graceful purity and every second around us it is like the air we breathe.
It’s like light. We can’t see it, but we can see with it. And we spend our lives using it for a moment. Most of the time we lag far behind. But just like the great artists, in whatever field they work, from words to colors to craftsmanship, we are all just trying to bring ourselves and others a little closer to that invisible but unmistakable something that we all have surrounds.
And we all start in the same place: the blank page, the blank canvas, the quiet keyboard, the uncut piece of wood or tin or a lump of clay or a bale of cloth. And we all have our own creative language, beautiful and unique, and whether we speak through words or colors or notes or saws and sandpaper or fingers on clay or cloth and thread or plant and cultivate seeds in fertile soil, we try to make our own voice to harmonize with the great voice that beats and breathes around us. And when we feel like we have just a breath of that breath and follow it wherever it leads, it not only ennobles us, but also those around us who happen to understand the same language we are trying to speak.
And everything begins every day, every moment with the blank page, the blank canvas, the raw materials, the rising sun and the opening eyes after a night of sleep.
Of course, most days we don’t care. We are busy with our stuff and our stuff is overwhelming. Our things are on the verge of burying us if we let them, and some days they bury us despite our best efforts to keep our heads above the ground. Sometimes it is only late in the day when things finally calm down that we can hear our voices calling and remind ourselves that this is not what we fully are.
But we are tired. Maybe tomorrow we will take a step towards the place where our voice is calling from. If not tomorrow, then on the weekend. There is always a lot of time.
I’m not kidding or judging. Life is often difficult. Brutally so. But beauty still exists, and there is a voice within each of us calling us to find our own expressions of beauty and truth and create something as simple as a card for a friend in need or as great as the Mona Lisa.
It’s all a blank page and ours to fill.
Chris Huston is a writer and award-winning columnist based in southern Idaho. Connect with Chris on Facebook and Instagram at Chris Huston-Finding My Way and on chrishustonauthor.com.
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