Life as an Artist

Standing with my right shoulder behind the groomsman in front of me blocked my view of the groom. I could see the bride's face, full of electric excitement, every word she spoke through her beaming mouth accentuated the gleam in her eyes as she waited for the pastor to get to the part of the kiss and the announcement of her name. I stood there thinking about how this is art. This is a masterpiece, a wedding in a beautiful setting of a white building with a perfectly crafted wooden vaulted ceiling and blue stained glass windows; music containing a harpist, people sitting, standing, gathering for a moment all captured with a photographer's lens. This is art. This moment is artistic, it is beauty far beyond my sometimes simplistic view on beauty.

A couple days later I was playing a soccer game. The rain poured down on us for seven and a half minutes at a time. The players ran back and forth, chasing a ball that did not feel the kick we gave it. There was a fire in one individual's eyes, he was alive as he ran up the field carrying the ball off the ground in a majestic motion that made it appear as though the ball and him were connected at the foot. All was right in that moment. His movements were crisp, yet improvised. He body seemed to know what his brain had yet to think of, as he moved in not all together overly complicated, yet poetically perfect motions. A song to the rhythm of the rain, to the fall of his feet, to the sway of the trees, to the where the ball and feet meet played a simple and elegant symphony. It was art. This was artistic.

In every sport I play, in everything which I participate I want to see the art. I love sports in part because to those who are incredible at those sports there is an artistic beauty in the way the carry themselves, in the way play the game. It is beautiful to watch an athlete who is really "on" and wonderful to be involved in a moment when you witness something truly amazing, truly beautiful, truly memorable. It is interesting because those in the that moment rarely seem to realize that they are truly creating something beautiful, they are just acting in the moment that is but a brushstroke in the midst of other moments. But for those of us watching we feel, we think, we act as though we are part of something truly remarkable and indeed usually we are.

I think one of the things that drives me to be better is that I want to feel that art as I move. I want to be a part of that artistic moment. I want to understand so much what I am seeing, to experience that moment that it causes me to push myself. In this sense I try to seek to understand any sport that someone loves so that I can see the beauty of it; or learn to play it myself so that I can experience the beauty first hand; or see the pure beauty in two people's lives come together as partnering puzzle pieces of individuals interlock to create something better than the single incomplete picture.

At the end of the my life I want to have created a masterpiece. Every moment I want to be a brush stroke toward something bigger than myself. I look at the world and I think sometimes we've lost the view of artists. We have lost the grace of the moment, the flow of freedom, and the heart of humanity. The interesting thing about this is that a masterpiece, whether in art or writing, is not created by a single word or brushstroke. The masterpiece is created by the putting together of several beautiful and sometimes mundane individual moments culminating in a finished breathtaking product.

When I finish with this world, when I finish with this day, when I finish with this moment in eternity, when my blimp on the history line of humanity is over I hope to have left a little masterpiece that perhaps someone would have picked up, added on, and offered their take on in order to better their work of life. At the end of today, I hope to have added to the painting.