BEHOLD

ink and watercolor on watercolor paper

The word behold is an archaic term, meaning "to see or observe (a thing or person, especially a remarkable or impressive one)."  I think of behold as similar to a previous word, revere, in the sense that one reveres something through the act of looking with depth.  The first thing that came to mind when give the word behold, was the phrase "beauty in the eye of the beholder" which springs from a statement made by Plato, "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder."

The perception of beauty is not objective but rather subjective.  Each and every person has a different opinion of what constitutes beauty.  Another quote in relation to this idea comes from Henry David Thoreau, who states "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."  Essentially, each of us can look at the same object, but only some of us will see it's beauty, or only some of us will find particular aspects of the object or place beautiful.

The choice is completely ours to behold beauty in our life.  Part of taking a journey is saying "yes" to finding beauty in all that you see.  Many would argue that we live in harsh world.  But choosing to find beauty through suffering, pain, and all of our experiences, is choosing to live a life full of rich complexity and meaning.  When we choose to behold all the beauty before us, we are choosing to live a life that is beautiful in itself.  We are choosing to be appreciative, positive rather than negative, and to in turn create a positive impact on our personal worlds.  Choosing to take time to behold and appreciate the beauty in our lives is essential to truly experience and enjoy our personal journeys; I choose to behold the beauty in my life, to appreciate it, and to create it in hopes of fulfilling my own journey.

TRUST (REVERE)

digital photograph, double exposure (Nikon D3000)

watercolor on watercolor paper

To trust is defined as "to believe in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of," or "to have faith or confidence in (something or someone)."  To revere is defined as "to feel deep respect or admiration for something," and is synonymous with "to honor."  When put together, I think of trusting as a way of revering someone by having the utmost faith in this person to carry out a particular deed.  We entrust others with our feelings, our hearts, and our thoughts, and how they treat us these things are crucial as to how we see the person and how important they are to us.  Trust is the foundation of any relationship, whether it be friendship, family, or romantic love.  Thus, trusting someone allows us to grow in reverence for others.

What is often forgotten, however, is that we must first trust in ourselves and revere our personal being before we may trust and revere others.  Personal flaws can often keep us from recognizing our beauty and our importance.  Often, we throw much of our decisions to the wind, relying almost exclusively on fate to guide us.  But we forget that there is a crucial choice as to who and what we choose to trust in.  When we choose to trust our intuition and our inner being, we learn to revere our own inner beauty and light, which in turn shines from within, without.  Learning to love ourselves is a huge step on the way to trusting where our feet are leading us.  This takes time.  We must come to a deep respect of and honor ourselves in order to proceed in the right directions and to live a meaningful life; one where our own person is just as meaningful as other persons, so that we may recognize the worth of ourselves and of others.  We cannot forget that we, as individuals, are sacred.  We must trust the timing of our lives, but revere who we are and the choices that we make in this life.

An excerpt from E.E. Cumming's poem, "Dive for Dreams," serves as inspiration:

trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward)
honor the past
but welcome the future
(and dance your death
away at the wedding)
never mind a world
with its villains or heroes
(for good likes girls
and tomorrow and the earth)
in spite of everything
which breaths and moves, since Doom
(with white longest hands
neating each crease)
will smooth entirely our minds
-before leaving my room
i turn, and (stooping
through the morning) kiss
this pillow, dear
where our heads lived and were.

ANCHOR (SEARCH)

watercolor on watercolor paper

To anchor is defined as "to secure firmly in position," "to provide with a firm basis or foundation," or, more specifically, "to moor a ship to the sea bottom."  To search means "to try to find something by looking or otherwise seeking carefully and thoroughly," or "to examine thoroughly in order to find something or someone."

When given the word anchor, of course, the first thing that sprang to mind was the physical word anchor, which is a noun, describing a heavy piece of metal capable of holding ships in one place, keeping them from drifting. A powerful word.  But the verb to anchor is equally powerful.  When a person is anchored, one is firmly stationed in a physical place or figurative situation; one can be said to have solid ground under his or her feet.  When combined with the verb search, I thought of the desire to search for answers while in a certain situation that seems permanent.  Along with this came the word roots.  Roots of trees and vegetation essentially anchor plants to the ground, keeping them firmly rooted to a spot.  Often, we may feel like trees.  Are minds, hearts, and even our physical bodies can seem to be anchored to a certain place.  We feel more at home in some places than others, with some people more than others.  When we are searching for answers, our personal roots anchor us to the ground, and we can often find the answers that we seek merely by being who we are and remembering how we got there.

"All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted."
Saint Teresa of Avila

MEND (RENEW)

watercolor, ink, and thread on watercolor paper

clay and Kalanchoe sp.

To mend means "to repair something that is broken or damaged," "to heal or cure," or "to free from faults or defects."  To renew means "to make something new, fresh, or strong again."  When put together, I think of mending and renewing as fixing or healing something to make it whole again, in order to make it better, often diminishing faults or pain.  We do this in our own ways, for our own reasons, however foolish or temporary.  Mending and renewing hold a special place in my heart.

There is almost always something about ourselves that we are not happy with.  Something we wish we could fix, make better, improve.  This could be something physical, like our complexion or our noses.  Something mental like our thoughts about our bodies or others' bodies.  Something spiritual like the way we wear our hearts on sleeves every time we fall for someone.  We learn to mend our faults in any way we can to make ourselves feel better.  We put makeup on our faces, we cover our scars.  We mend broken hearts by sewing them back together again, stitch by painful stitch.  For me, my weakness is found in my ears; growing up with a hearing disability has made me question my worth my whole life.  I have worn machines in my ears since age eight and have never felt natural, have never felt 100% whole.  I have covered these machines with my hair time and again, to hide what I feel is ugly.  But I have grown to learn to live with my personal "fault" and have fixed it in the ways that I have know how.  I have mended and renewed my image of my ears into something somewhat beautiful.  When they start to feel ugly or I start to feel ashamed about them, I simply imagine one of my favorite things - beautiful flowers - sprouting out of them instead of my hearing aids, and all is well again.

In the healing words of Kurt Vonnegut:

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” 

BRIDGE

To bridge is defined as "a structure carrying a road, path, railroad, or canal across a river, ravine, railroad, or other obstacle," or "something that is intended to reconcile or form a connection between to things."  Although bridge as a noun is a physical piece of civic engineering, when I hear the word bridge, I think of it as an act of bridging or connecting and closing a gap between two things and thus connecting or joining them together.

Bridging, either physically or metaphorically, is an act of bringing ideas, things, places, and people together.  Without bridges, we wouldn't be able to get to the other side of many places or things.  Building bridges between ourselves and other people are what allow us to create long-lasting, fulfilling relationships.  The figure of speech "burn(ing) the bridge" has come to mean the act of cutting off all ties to someone or something, often completely ending a relationship.  We often must make choices whether to build or burn a bridge, to cross them or to leave them uncrossed, with people we care about in our lives; these personal bridges either grow us or stifle us.  These bridges may be very delicate unlike their literal steel-framed brethren and can topple at the softest breech, like petals.

A poem came to mind by Shel Silverstein, "This Bridge."

This bridge will only take you halfway there
To those mysterious lands you long to see:
Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fairs
And moonlit woods where unicorns run free.
So come and walk awhile with me and share
The twisting trails and wondrous worlds I've known.
But this bridge will only take you halfway there--
The last few steps you'll have to take alone.

SHARE

pencil and watercolor on watercolor paper

To share is often defined as "to have or give a portion of something to another or others."  Synonyms include to split, to divide, to ration, to give.  When I think of share, the latter synonym, give, comes to mind.  For me, to share means to give parts of what is yours to another person, and they in turn give you parts of what is theirs to share with you.  Often, these parts can be things that we really love and cherish; things that are meaningful and show that you care for that person through the act of sharing.

Sharing can often result in giving parts of yourself that are very meaningful.  Often these things are a large part of who you are as a person, and the way in which you share them can illustrate the kind of person that you are.  Those things which you share are often parts of yourself that you have cultivated and essentially have grown a surplus of, which are free to be given to others (figuratively and literally).  Milk and honey have long been considered luxuries and literary symbols (i.e.- the Bible), making them very meaningful gifts when shared as well as beautiful when paired.  Sharing something beautiful, meaningful, and symbolic often makes sharing in itself a type of ritual or sacred act between two or more people.  Sharing can be an act of love, an act of kindness, an act of forgiveness.  Thus, sharing, brings people together by erasing the boundaries between us by giving each other parts of what makes us different and similar to one another.

Something to note is illustrated perfectly in the words of David Hockney, as art itself is a true act of sharing:

"What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing: you wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.  I am constantly preoccupied with how to remove distance so that we can all come closer together, so that we can all begin to sense that we are the same, we are one."

CARRY

watercolor on coldpress watercolor paper

Carry is defined as "to move someone or something from one place to another" or "to carry the weight of."  We carry physical pain, we carry burdens, we carry thoughts and feelings, we carry joy, we carry children, we carry physical loads, we carry loss, we carry love and hate.  Often, I have found, that carrying feelings and emotions for people can bring about a sense of fulfillment or deep loss.  Carrying pain, for whatever reason, is a very profound experience that is not easily shaken.  It feels like a weight placed on the center of the chest, that must be carried day in and day out, and as if it cannot be removed.  It feels like a gaping hole in the heart, one feels short of breath, as if the void will never be filled.  Often, this feeling of pain is hard to let go of because we become so used to its presence that we even begin to miss the pain itself once we do start to let it go.  Pain can seep slowly and can hinder our personal journeys.  It can cause us to forget our worth and our path in life.

But we must constantly remind ourselves that there is also light, love, joy, happiness, and good emotions and feelings that we may also carry.  We can choose to forget the physical weight that pain and sadness, the feelings of loss, bring to us, and choose to instead love ourselves and others.  We should take care to remember that we are worthy of love and that those who love us most, even if not physically present, are always in our hearts.  Although the pain of unrequited love is often unparalleled, we cannot let our hearts grow cold or hard to the world.   We must continue to carry the people and things that make us happy within our hearts, always, because love, although perhaps through its rose-tinted glasses, makes the world a much more beautiful place.

The poem that sprang to mind as soon as we were given the word "carry" is one of my favorites, by E.E. Cummings:

"[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]"

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

       i fear
no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)