Express Yourself!

Hello!

I keep thinking about the handprints that show up in the wall art of prehistoric cave paintings. And wondering what feelings or sense or desire brought that particular imagery, that particular mode of self expression, from those early humans, into being.

We know from the cave paintings what was going on outside them - their environment and experiences of daily life were chronicled on the walls of caves: animals and the hunt, sun, rain, mountains, clouds - a primitive form of symbolic language depicting things and ideas.

But the deeper question for me is - what was going on inside these ancient ancestors of ours - what was that something within them that yearned to be expressed, that caused them to make their mark in their world? What is the something - that inspires a human to draw an image of their own individual hand into the bigger story of life - as if to say, “I am here, I exist. I matter in the greater continuum.”

The handprint is a universal symbol of humanity, something we all share. And at the same time it is totally personal to the individual. Our hands are directly related to our feeling functions as humans. It is literally through touch that we interact with the world, we write or paint, we share and receive information. And figuratively, we emphasize our feelings and express ourselves with gestures. Our hands are an extension of who we are and the means by which we form, change, and bring our world into being. They are the conduit between our selves and the collective.

Central to the human experience is a desire to make our place in the world and to find out who we are in relationship to ourselves and others. Artists perhaps even more so! Our feelings tell us who we are and our hands help us express that. E.E. Cummings in his 1955 “Poet’s Advice to Young Students” writes “Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know. But not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people. But the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.”

I remember when I was in preschool, my teacher observed to my parents that “Lisa can create anything she wants to with her hands”. That brain-hand coordination, that extension of self to naturally express and create, is essential to who we are as humans and inseparable from our existence as humans. And in order to move in and out of our environment and back to ourselves, we have to know ourselves. Art is a triumph of the true self, and one of the purest ways we can access that truth.

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead defines art as “the means by which we seek to understand ourselves and the world”. We are all creative beings and participate in a million forms of ‘art’ in many different ways - as both the creator and as the receiver. The point of life is to bring our authentic selves, our souls, into full development. When we express ourselves, when we create art and share it with others, it touches something in them too, that wants to be expressed. And together we create a world where everyone can thrive and shine.

I'll leave you with one final inspiration from James Hillman, who writes in The Soul's Code, “There is more to human life than our theories of it allow. Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this ”something" as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out-of-nowhere, a fascination, a particular turn of events struck like an annunciation. This is what I must do! This is what I've got to have! This is who I am!" 

I'd love to hear from you - hit reply and share with me what that “something” is for you, and what you are doing today to Express Yourself!

Let your light shine,

 Lisa