As I sit in a jet black Suburban on the way toward Albuquerque, New Mexico, I keep peeking over my little brother’s shoulder to see what he is working on. I can so quickly travel back to growing up together. I remember our adventures together, usually with swords and underwear on our heads. Every day spent linked at the hip.
As we have gotten older, our intimacy with one another has only grown wider and deeper. Instead of being united by superheroes and make believe, we are united by creativity and making tangible things from our make believe. For him, that’s visual art. For me, that’s audible art.
With my eyes peering over his right shoulder, I see him making from the well within him. Watching him make art is like drinking cold water after a long run. Sometimes my own creativity feels like I’m always running to catch up, like this imaginary clock is ticking down and I must make things quick enough and good enough to keep up.
My little brother makes because he loves to. Every time I watch him making, I see again what it means to be creative. To be creative is to love making things, not just have made stuff. I step back from this portrait that I see every time I look at just my little brother and see the grand scheme of my relationships to all those I love.
Over and over again I am reminded, taught, and inspired by all of them in their own ways.
I am but a mosaic of all the people that daily pour into me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I find that the more I get to know one person and see all that is to be found in them alone, it is like discovering a new world. Every day is different in my own eyes. Isn’t it just the same in theirs? If that’s the case, we don’t just have one world to explore, but several billion new every single day. Some seeing their very first world, some their last, but mostly we are all seeing yet another world trying to make sense of it by stringing together all the ones we’ve seen up till now.
The goal of life for so many is to reach this imagined height at the top of all their dreams and ambitions. Upward is the goal. And a good goal too! To stay still is to become stagnant and being a human means being in constant change. To go downward runs counter to our very nature, which is always setting high hopes even when we are falling. Even to those who seem hopeless, we are always reaching for salvation. Like searching for a breath out of the seas in which we drown.
I believe that the more we first see into and then participate in the lives of those around us, we naturally move upward. This is the upward we were made for. We were made to share the top. I know this analogy firsthand after having climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with my family but one year ago. If I stood atop that mountain alone, which I know I could not have, it would not at all have been as life-giving and abundant as it was. I remember racing the last 200 meters with my oldest brother. I remember spinning in circles trying to capture it all with my little brother. I remember running back to see my sister who was at war against some killer altitude sickness.
And of course, who did I take my picture with at the top? Those with me! The mountaintop was made for many. We move upward by linking arms with the souls that trek beside us.
Growing upward is growing outward.