On love, on grief, on every human thing,
Time sprinkles Lethe's water with his wing.
—Walter Savage Landor
This was the first verse I read when I took my first official poetry class. It has a nice ring to it I admit, and it is certainly true for almost everything around us from joyful celebrations to painful setbacks. It gives a sense of calmness and assurance that no matter what happens in the end everything will be okay, and if it’s not okay then it’s not the end.
I was okay with this statement, and I was okay with this belief, but I wasn’t okay with the idea of letting go, and I was most certainly not okay with letting go of one of the things I loved. I wasn’t okay with the fact that I stopped painting and drawing.
Growing up is indeed a very hard thing, and you have to go through things that you don’t certainly sign up for, but it helps you grow and learn. What growing up teaches you as well, however, is that you have to be willing to let go of things in order to gain other things, and to be honest, as much as I’d like to convince myself that I am flexible with whatever situation is given to me, and that I can deal with any circumstances, there are things that I don’t want to be okay with letting go of. There are things I refuse to let Time sprinkle Lethe’s water on. Painting and drawing were one of these things.
I sometimes wonder, how did I stop, what happened? and I sometime lean towards giving the traditional answer of: You know, growing up, getting busy with life, and you just let go of one’s hobbies, you know? But that’s the thing. Painting and drawing were never hobbies. It wasn’t a secondary option for me, and it was certainly not something that I wanted to “grow up from”.
Then again, I still stopped. I still don’t use my HB pencil at least once a week for a few hours and draw. I still no more get my hands dirty with very hard to clean oil colors, and ruin most of my t-shirts, but never stop a painting until it’s done. I still don’t practice my art. I still miss the beauty of the process itself. The process of creating something. Not because someone told you have to, not because someone instructed you to do so, but rather because it’s something that gives you happiness and joy.
After all the contemplating, and inner arguments, after all the excuses I give myself about how I don’t have time or about how maybe I just don’t like drawing anymore, it hit me. This is the phase where you make a decision. You see what matters to you and what doesn’t. You realize what you stand for and what really doesn’t represent who you are.
These moments are what matter the most, and even though now I stopped drawing, and I maybe lost my passion forever, but it’s okay because these are the decisions that build who I am.
