I know kind of cliche right, but its the truth. I don't know why, but when my family and I moved to Texas and I started high school everything was different. I didn't keep up with my all my dance forms, nor did I find someone else to continue my violin studies and acting was definitely a no, no. And why I had such automatic negating thoughts I don't know...It was like a switch was flipped inside of me and instantly went from dreaming and thinking of the possibilities, turning my desires into reality and trying anything regardless of the outcome or its lack of real life benefits to extreme practicality and logic. I know longer dreamt of all the things I wanted to do. Instead, I started making strategic plans to buy a car, volunteering and making good grades to get into college, gaining the necessary experience and skills to make me more marketable to any future employers. I went from extreme creativity to intense logic in less than a 6 months and I've never been able to let loose and let my mind imagine till my heart gives out ever again. Creative Nichollette left and serious never joking Nichollette arrived.
But I've always been inspired and thought of re-discovering that side of me again. I want to re-discover that side of me again, but for some reason whenever I attempt to turn my dreams into a reality something holds me back or keeps me from following through. Recently in the last 3 years, I've wanted to learn how to play acoustic guitar. I'm not sure if I've romanticized sitting the park, pulling the guitar and just making music with nature or what, but I've always been drawn to this instrument more so than the violin. I've also wanted to get back into acting. Although I'm sure my time to be famous has completely passed, I still think it would be fun to do as a hobby at least, just to see, if I still enjoy it. I've also made plans to make beautiful art and unleash my imagination in the area regardless of how terrible they may come out.
I made plans for every single last one of these. At point, I was enrolled in an oil painting class. I went out and bought all the materials; spending a little over $100 dollars for the paints. I found a gorgeous metallic blue vintage acoustic guitar on Craigslist (It only cost me $80). I was taking private guitar lessons at a studio and had found several community/amateur acting theaters in the area. I was going to recapture my dreams and live them out...all of them, but I didn't. I just stopped doing them all. Although at the time I blamed it on work as I was a department manager for a big time retailer, but I know if I really wanted to keep on with it I would have found a way...That was 2 years ago...
My life doesn't have much happiness in it and I'm starting to realize why. I feel caged and inside that cage I'm being deprived of nourishment and treatment for old and new wounds that just won't heal. I'm caged by the overwhelming presence that I've allowed practicality and logic to have in my life. Although I know they are needed in some capacity, they become detrimental when one's natural imagination, creativity and desire to be free are deprived. My freedom has been taken away from me of my own accord and kept away by fear. Fear that I will fail, fear that I will look like a fool. Fear that society, my family and friends won't accept me. Fear that its not the right time and simultaneously, that that time has passed. Inspiration and creativity doesn't come at a specific time. Similarly happiness does not come at some specific moment when everything is perfect and in alignment. They are conscious choices. Although there are moments of happiness that do seem to occur only because of the timing, but to maintain happiness is a perpetual choice and allowing the random flowing of creative energy is also a choice. Both of which allows for the transformation of dreams into reality. This is why children are so happy, because they are free, no limits, no fears of what people will think. They believe and know that anything is possible. That the imaginative is the real and they make it happen without fear.
I'm reminded of all this, by...and don't freak out on me, Twilight. Yes, Twilight. As I started and concluded my Twilight marathon last night, I sat in my bed just allowing all of these seemingly abstract thoughts and theories flourish and connect on their own. While there were so many, I won't expound upon all of them here. The main thread of thought keeping everything together was the thread of choice. Twilight has received so much criticism for the bad examples and messages that it sends ranging from the relationship of Bella and Edward, the relationship of a 100+ year old and, for all intensive purposes, dead man who kills animals to survive and a 17 year old girl. They, and more specifically scholars and psychoanalysts, claim that their relationship is abusive and characteristic of current domestic abuse homes and couples. The lists goes on. Although I can see where they may get this from. Its not what keeps me coming back to the movies. It's not what attracts me so intensely or makes me the extreme Twi-Hard that I am.
It's the other side of the coin that I see. Its the overwhelming representation of what love is, in all its forms, ranging from the unflinching loyalty that the Cullens and Charlie have for Bella to the fighting love of Jacob surrounding their "friendship" to the romantic love of Bella and Edward, itself. When we get so hung up on the particulars of any given situation, we miss the bigger picture and I think that's exactly what happened to the critics of Twilight. We miss Twilight's messages of hope and faith surrounding Bella, an awkward, quirky and non-conventional teenage girl who gets "the guy." I realized last night that that's why I can relate to her so much (despite her upsetting me every single time in New Moon and Eclipse). She is the image of most women, of most teenage girls. We never get "that guy." But she does without having to change who she is. She didn't have to start wearing makeup or heels or show cleavage to get him to love her. He falls, of his own accord, without her having to change a thing and I believe that's what we all hope and desire. To find someone who falls so deeply in love with us, for us, without condition. We miss the message of embracement, acceptance and love of oneself as Bella transforms into a vampire.
Yes I know what instantaneously ran through your head, but hear me out. When she is "hunting," there is a line where she says, "I was born to be a vampire, I was born to have this life." I don't see gothic and sadistic images when I hear that, instead what I hear is the awkward quirky girl, accepting herself as different from the societal norm and making the decision to fully come into herself, who she was meant to be. This is confirmed in a prior scene, in the concluding scenes of Eclipse, when Bella tells Edward she will marry him and they must tell her father. She informs him that it was never a decision between Edward and Jacob, but it was a decision between who she "should" be and who she actually is. This is extremely characteristic of what many women and men face in American society, if not the entire global community, and couldn't be more pertinent, relevant and applicable to my current life situation. Here lately, I've been constantly faced with choices between what I should do and what I want to do, between what society expects of me and what I desire for myself. Ultimately, continually leading back to, who I should be and who I naturally am. There are so many positive messages, examples and life inspirations that are missed when people watch Twilight, because they choose to focus on the negative. There are always two sides to every coin, every story, every experience and every situation. There is always evil and good in every story, in every lesson, in every person. Like the famous Professor Dumbledore said, what matters is what side we choose (I'm a die hard HP fan as well).
We choose how we want to interpret any given situation, including movies, if we want to see it in a positive light or negative. We choose how we want to interpret life and as a result we choose what tone, shade, color and light are realities are presented to us in. We truly do make up our realities and as such we can change them at will. We create, design and paint what reality is and how it will be shown. The very definition of the imaginative. Reality is a combined product of choice and imagination. Today, I'm choosing to re-imagine my reality in a beautiful shade of positivity. To do this, I'm choosing to turn my dreams into my reality, one step, one dream at a time. First up is the guitar, time to take this baby to the Guitar Center for a tune up :-)
*If you want to read more about my prior attempt at learning how to play the guitar, here are a few links:
http://lightofmanjusha.blogspot.com/2010/06/musical-expressions.html
http://lightofmanjusha.blogspot.com/2010/06/musical-expressionsthe-guitar.html
http://lightofmanjusha.blogspot.com/2010/07/musical-expressions-stumbling-block.html
http://lightofmanjusha.blogspot.com/2010/11/musical-expressionspostponed.html
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