Sometime back, a few friends came together around the theme “your heart knows the way”.
Before we ‘gathered’ virtually, everyone was invited to do a small artwork:
On a blank sheet of paper, draw or paint your colourful dream for a new world.
I sat down with the question and started thinking what is my dream of a new world? Do I want the same world or do I want a different world or do I want both – some things to stay the same and some things to change? What is it that I find lacking right now? so many of our assumptions of how we should live and the “rules of society” have been challenged in the last couple of months. I don’t know for anyone else, but I felt a resistance within me in challenging those assumptions.
When I sat down to draw my colorful dream for a new world, I again felt that resistance and I realized I have so many “shoulds” in my life that I don’t even allow myself the freedom to choose my own colors.
I don’t know what the new world will look like, but I dream that the new world will offer everyone the chance to be unique. We will be able to cut the strings of “should” to imagine new possibilities. To choose our own colors for our sky.
This drawing is inspired from an art activity that I had planned with a few friends. Growing up all of us (at least in India) learned almost the same kind of nature/landscape drawing – triangle mountains, semi circle or quarter circle sun from behind the mountains, a river in front, a hut, few trees, and tick-mark birds! The sky and river should be blue, the sun should be yellow, the mountains should be brown, the trees should be green… etc. In this activity, I asked friends to use colors which will not be their first instinct. To challenge the assumed “normal”… to create their own new normal.
In my world, I would be able to imagine a pink sky, a yellow river, purple sun, blue trees, orange bushes and pink fish. While it is a very childish drawing, it was difficult to color this. My own mind was stopping me from picking pink for sky or yellow for river or blue for trees but as I challenged my own resistances, it led to opening up of new possibilities and breaking up of a fear of going against the assumed “should”s I live in.