It's Okay to Be Human- Musings of Stephanie Jennifer

  Vince Lombardi once said;

 "We are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because in the process we will catch excellence. I am not remotely interested in just being good." 

   I think that's my attitude towards my Art. In the past, I've had an almost obsessive behavior towards perfection. I wanted everything I created to be perfect, but of course that wasn't possible because I am human and humans aren't perfect. I learnt. I learnt...

  I learnt that it was okay to make mistakes. I learnt that I had to give myself the time and space for my abilities to catch up with what my imagination could conjure. I learnt that I would never be satisfied with what I created, but that it was okay because that meant I knew I could improve. I learnt that it was okay to let myself be imperfect.

  In many ways, art has influenced and changed who I am as a person. I am an extremely introspective person, and yet I like to internalise things, to not talk about my thoughts or feelings to others. That was unhealthy for my soul. I was bottling all my emotions as feelings inside me, and those raw emotions, ideas, thoughts, creations... all those things had no where to go.  Art became an outlet to release all those things.

  Art taught me patience. It taught me to be critical about myself, and at the same time, to be kind to myself. It taught me to allow myself to be human- to love and be loved, to speak about my thoughts and feelings, to allow myself make mistakes, to be okay with being imperfect and creating imperfect things.

  We chase perfection. We (perhaps-maybe) achieve excellence. We fall. We fail. Yet we must get up again. It is through mistakes that we learn, and it is through mistakes that we become better people. But first, we must learn to tell ourselves that it's okay to make mistakes. That it's okay to be human.