by Evan Symonds
The subject of goals and dreams is at this moment a pulsatingly alive issue for me. I am pushing pedal to the floor to get my music CD completed. I will send you some songs as soon as I have a few that my producer and I have mixed (gotten volume levels right for, taken out wrong sounds like pops and crackles, all the picayune and amazing fixes that take it to sounding juuust right). I’ll share with you guys some songs as soon as I have a few ready!
The happiness that comes on as I get songs done or make distinct progress is well, far above average happiness. It’s wild exhilaration, unbridled joy. That sort of utter blow-out is something only getting closer to achieving a real, live Life Goal can bring on.
This will be my coming out of the art closet, so to speak. My family and friends have all been very aware of my music composing and singing passion, but the point for me is to make it an offering to the world at large. I’ve got to get this done to round out my life with that satisfaction and know I’ve done my best.
Part of doing this is my desire to help bring others out of their own art closets or goal closets. The world needs unadulterated joy and inspiration because, though we hear polite sounds all the time, “Hello, how are you?” “May I help you?” “How was your dining experience?” REAL love and caring is a less apparent commodity and only real love and caring do the spiritual trick of enhancing life and imbuing it.
How better to move up real caring and joy in life than by looking straight at what matters most to us individually. A goal, true-for-you, vibrant, calling-you-to-it goal. Don’t concern yourself now with if it is possible nor if it is acceptable. Not if it is or is not already done. At the stage of finding your heartfelt goal, these others don’t matter.
A goal that sets your heart pounding with purpose. What do you want to get done? What do you want to give the world?
Whatever that is, it is not necessarily yours if it comes from someone else. Might be, but that could be a real longshot. If your mother always felt you’d make a perfect sprong-maker, but making sprongs leaves you lukewarm, it ain’t it. If you husband smiles most appreciatively when you show him a perplagle you baked and he suggests that you take those perplagles to the international market — but making even raw honey perplages doesn’t make you turn into a leaping wild woman for sheer joy, it ain’t it.
I get utterly ridiculous, by any calm standards of demeanor, when I get a song done or record a mean, lean, super-moving vocal line or compose a piano piece. I cry, scream with joy, melt into goose-bumps (is that possible to melt into goose-bumps? No matter you get the idea…). I mean, it’d be embarrassing to have anyone but my closest pals and family witness me in the throes of joy of artistic creation. LOL!! But it’s a piece of real happiness.
I am no exception to the rule. We all want something bad and know that our life revolves around if it gets done. What varies, as I see it, is the particular goal, which can be anything, and the drive or insistence on achieving it and on not paying undue attention to barriers.
When one settles on something to do that ‘s personally thrilling and just right, then on the one hand, spotting and claiming that opens up vast capacity, a great emotional surge, ingenuity and all sorts of creativity.
But it isn’t all uphill. On the other hand, finding one’s goal in life can bring on a backwash, as flood in stops, barriers, excuses, delays, urges to invalidate the goal, to say it’s not worth it or maybe I am not up to doing it or simply the feeling of wanting to give up. These and more can shake the goal-seeker at the foundation.
Barriers are part of the territory. Get going on a goal and whompf, in may zoom some solid objections. In come thoughts or even real comments like: “I’m dreadfully sorry but this is just unattainable at this time by you, you especially.” As long as you recognize that those negative things that come in on one are to be expected as the challenge aspect of this, then you can view that you are just that extra bit more determined and powerful than any barriers.
My eldest daughter had a horrid art teacher. We didn’t know that she was horrid until my daughter made a phenomenally good painting. She did two actually, one of an extreme close-up of some chocolate chip cookies and another of an apple. They could’ve been badly done and the message of this story would still be the same but as it happens, in my viewpoint they were evocative works of art, not just good renderings of objects. Well, when this teacher asked the class who wanted to pursue art as a professional and up shot my daughter’s hand, this creep ridiculed her. The experience was crushing.
I did my part to try to get her to see the truth. Not the “truth” that her art was terrific, though it was, in my estimation, because the quality of art is a matter of opinion anyway — but I wasn’t wanting to settle her on that point as much as this other: that the teacher was to that extent crazy and off her own stated purpose when she detoured or discouraged someone from pursuing art. That doesn’t fall under the stated mission of art instructor, does it?
When it comes to our goals, we wear our hearts on our sleeves. I would like to suggest that we allow our hearts to radiate the glow of self-certainty and on top of that, that we throw some thick armor.
Of what is that armor made? Dogged, unshakable certainty in the validity of the effort and the chance of succeeding. Not that you (or I) are the greatest imaginable in this field but that you might be and that attaining to that (trying for it or what completely pleases you) is a good thing and…the biggie here…that no one, even with all the awe-inspiring credentials, may stop you. It’s a question of integrity.
Sometimes there seems to be an army of discouraging thought all ready to shoot down the intention to impinge on others with one’s art or one’s goodness or one’s anything. Our job is to ignore those and to push on.
The power is in us. Let’s unhinge our lives and unpry our own true goals from the sticky goo of disparagement, doubt and nay-saying. We can do what seems impossible if we decide unequivocally (no other voices, just one) to move ahead despite all and get it done.
Here is a “Hooray!” in advance of even knowing what you aim to do or have been doing, but hooray for you!
I hope you have enjoyed this article. I would love to hear from you!
Hugs to you and yours,
Evan
www.evansgarden.com
727-449-0900