The easiest way to understand the meaning of “art” is to consider its Latin and Old French definition: “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power,” or, “the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance.”
In turn, I like to think of art as the one universal, unspoken language that connects all of us, despite our differences, together as one.
We hear of schools around the nation cutting general art programs out of their course options far too often, massive protests, and students losing one of the most important things of all: self expression.
What is life with no expression?
We have music when the world feels wrong and we can get lost in a book when it feels like our skin is not even our own. When we can’t take the pressure of everyday life, we are blessed with the chance to travel to different worlds behind the walls of a movie theater and completely lose ourselves in the liberating freedom of dance and dreaming with our feet.
Art is the one thing that we do for ourselves. It's the thing that we turn to when we are done with a hard day of work, the only thing that we can use to reach the deeper parts of ourselves that sometimes feel lost in the struggles of life that viciously demand our attention.
Art tangles the roots of our soul. It connects and inspires people on a deeper level because this beautiful piece of ourselves makes up the very core of our being, a form of expression that unites the unspoken mind and the unspoken word to the feelings and thoughts that, in the end, make us all human.
Depriving the world of art takes away our humanity.
Art is what makes us human, what we use to survive in this harsh world. It is a concrete mark and a scream into the universe, footprints on the sand, something we can leave behind when the rest of who we once were perishes.
So we begin to ask these schools, "What will matter more in your final days of life, the amount of money in your bank account or the artistic notion, that pertinent piece of your existence, that you leave behind?"
Like a quote by Randy Travis, “It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you. It's what you leave behind you when you go.” Art is what we leave behind when our time in this world comes to an end. After the earth washes the memories of us clean with raging storms, art is the colors inside the rainbow. It is the reflection that is left in the puddles when the rain ceases.
Freedom of expression is the wailing of our soul, the thing that makes you feel driven and compassionate, like you are floating six inches above the ground and glued to one place at the same exact time. It is the thing that makes the stars and the universe combine and, finally, make complete, fathomed sense. It's a perfect expression of love, life, loss, and death that makes us feel like we are finally understood something in the ways that our tongues could never convey.
Art is that one thing that makes it just a little bit easier to be alive.
So, every day, no matter how stressful it is, take a moment to practice your art. Write a story, paint the flowers outside your kitchen window, sing that song like your lungs will give out tomorrow. Do whatever it is that makes your heart happy and free and that makes you, you.
Without this freedom of expression, there would be no creativity, no drive, and no self-satisfaction. Sometimes, just sometimes, the most valued and blissful things are the things that are most taken for granted.
Art is what is left after the storm, the one thing that connects us all and keeps our existence alive. It lets us feel what it's like to breathe and cry. It reminds us that we are all, empathetically and exquisitely, only human.
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