Yesterday, was my “get splattered” day. It started out with our refrigerator breaking and ended up with me supporting and soothing some big highs and lows from some of the people whom I love the most in my life. I call it the “get splattered” day because I also literally did get splattered in my art class.
One of the fellow students, who is particularly creative and enthusiastic decided that her artwork needed some “splattering” and so she loaded up her paintbrush with dark green ink and then she swung the brush back, thus inadvertently splattering my artwork as well as hers. Honestly, I wasn’t upset about this. She was apologetic and it helped that I wasn’t particularly excited about this particular painting which I was working on. (On an aside, it is so fascinating to me to notice that all of us students are handed the exact same picture of a fall tree as our template, and to see the many, many different interpretations of the same picture come from this one prompt. All of the interpretative paintings of the same fall tree were lovely in their own ways, and yet so unique and distinct from one another. Without looking at the duplicated template which all of us students used as our “model”, I doubt that you would believe that we all had the exact same original to “copy.” If you don’t believe in incredibly distinctive, individual perspectives and interpretations and nuances on anything and everything, take a painting class sometime. It is truly eye-opening, mind-opening and a big jolt to your own creativity.) But back to the “splattering” event – as I noted, my fellow student was immediately apologetic, and we actually got a big laugh out of the whole ordeal. I told her that my artwork had now become our “collab.” It made me remember a time when I was a kid and I accidentally dropped a snow cone on a poster that my babysitter was just finishing up for one of her school’s clubs. I distinctly remember that my babysitter didn’t see that particular incident as a fun, accidental collaboration. I remember keeping out of my babysitter’s hair for the rest of that day. The event clearly made a mark on me. I am still writing about it here today, in my fifties.
The real reason why I am spending so much time discussing “the splattering” event is that it makes an excellent analogy about how all of us inadvertently get splattered, all day long. We get splattered with news, and texts, and phone calls, and weather, and social media, and all of the various energy of all of the people whom we encounter all day long. Sometimes this splattering adds to our being, and it becomes a fun collaboration and growth moment for us, and other times this splattering just becomes muddling, messy and more of a destructive, icy snow cone spill, that just brings us down. Sometimes we have to become more protective of what we are allowing ourselves to be splattered with. Sometimes we need to sit with ourselves in our own private “studios” and clean some of the splattering off of ourselves, in order to get back to our own clean, clear slates.
I’m a spongy person. And I don’t say that proudly. It is something that I try to work on about myself, a lot. When I say that I am spongy, I mean that I tend to strongly sense and feel the moods and tones and the energy of the people around me, and the places that I am in, and then I have a tendency to soak it all in, and then I easily get overloaded. (I think this is a big reason why I love solitude and quiet places.) At the point when I feel overwhelmed, I get hypervigilant about “emotional monitoring” which isn’t a good thing. It drives other people crazy (because often my interpretations of why the energy is “off” can be wrong, and more importantly, it isn’t my job to fix or change anyone else’s moods for my own emotional comfort. When I emotionally monitor others, they can feel frustrated and smothered, and it actually blocks true intimacy between us because they start not wanting to trigger my anxiety with their problems.) When I get spongy, it depletes my own unprotected energy and I have little to give back to myself and to others. As I have said many times on the blog, you do not have to take on other people’s emotions in order to be empathetic. You can shield yourself from their splatter, but still admire their painting, and the subtle, interesting effects that the splatter has on the life of their evolving painting. If people ask for your input on their “splatter”, you can kindly give it to them, without soaking in their splatter, on to your own masterpiece. Your life’s painting is truly and uniquely your own to create and to evolve. Just as you honor your fellow creators’ right to their splatter choices, you get to decide how much splatter the masterpiece of your own life needs, and you alone get to decide what to create from that splatter.
******And here’s a fun, easy trick to dance off negative “splatter”. Just sing this song at the top of your lungs. The “splatter” just evaporates. Truly. Try it.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.