“Forget the island – let us rule in our studios” (Post 39)

Last night I spoke to a friend and we spoke about many things, such as the ecosystems, the cycle of life and cruelty in nature (from a human’s perspective). The conversation drifted towards work places and the power games and the ever-present workplace bully who could be a sociopath or a psychopath. When we are at university or college and we sit in the psychology class, this personality-type (the aforementioned type) does not feature in our attention spans, because such a person is definitely living on another planet and we are definitely not going to meet him or her here below. So, we study and write our exams and we all pass, hopefully.

Then we start to live our lives, we become a little older, the “forest” gets bigger, life’s journeys take us on new uncharted routes where we do not see all the traps of other people’s ambitions in the thicket; suddenly one bright happy day as we listen to the “sounds of the wild”, we become aware of the fact that there are some people who are making “growling” sounds when they see us. We have ruffled their “feathers” somehow, they want to micromanage and control us, they are territorial, they know better, they do not like us, even though they do not know us; they were placed in authority over us by a strange series of events or by big brother himself. We find ourselves in a reality show that may not end well for us: we may be voted off the island – our worlds may collapse. (Which sometimes may not be the worst thing to befall us, when we regard it with hindsight scrutiny.)

If we are lucky, we could remain unscathed in our territory, because it is just a clash of personalities with someone in our league (or on the same level); then both parties concerned can somehow understand the equation and work around this minor reality to guarantee a truce. However, a few of us will suffer a little more. As colourful as we reveal we are; as clever as we think we are; as happy as we know we are; as talented as we believe we are, we may fall into the hands of the predator type personality that is above our league. Once we are inside the web of the predator personality, the experts maintain, we have no other option but to flee eventually – we will have to vote ourselves off the island – we can apparently never beat the predator. They will rigorously rule our worlds with mad agendas until we have come to the end of ourselves in a myriad of ways. (Many of us have stories to tell to support this dire scenario.) It is a sad reality when our colours fade; when we think we have lost our edge; when we have forgotten how to laugh and when we have been made to believe we are incompetent.

On a lighter note, in our studios we can be victorious rulers, because we can push back those predators who want to steal our self-worth. We can arm ourselves with colour, guitars, music notes, words and other arty utensils to create a game plan that will ensure our survival. This is especially true once we are safely off the island of uncertainty and we have to enter a phase of healing or recovery. Let us allow the therapeutic nature of the arts (with a little help from Above) to revive us; we are definitely worth much more than mere monotone wall paper – as we were made to believe. We may not have found the perfect boss or job yet, but we can surely create a happy studio kingdom while we dream of “heaven”, this side of heaven. Remember, there is art in your heart. May we strive to be a blessing and may all our colours return: Let the happy games begin.

The painting I included here today is an oil colour experiment I did on stretched calico many moons ago, when I was still the “young one” in the career forest and very naïve about certain people’s harmful games. I cut paper stencils to create these figures and as you can see I had a little fun to create some illusion of “supportive power” in the universe?