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LightHearted Musings - Reframe the Canvas of Your Life
Posted by Dr. Molly Roberts on December 14th, 2008
The Gem cannot be polished without friction, nor Man perfected without trials.
–Chinese Proverb
How do you handle all the problems in your life when they seem so overwhelming? How do you let go of a past that has pummeled you? We talked last week about your life in words, so now let’s switch art forms and think about your life in pictures.
In reviewing our lives, after all, we seldom see them as words on a page - we see a series of images. When you think about your childhood relationship to your parents, words are often not what come to mind. Instead, you most likely replay mini movies in your mind, episodes of your childhood in which you see the scene both from within the picture and as an observer standing outside the scene.
How you frame that image determines its meaning and significance to you.
For instance, if you replay an argument you had with your mother at the age of eight, you may remember how you felt at the time and can take yourself right back into that moment. Many of us are stuck in this position, reliving our eight-year-old feelings as if they were happening right now.
However, there is another part of you that is observing the scene as if from above, with possibly an entirely different orientation. You may, from that vantage point, understand your mother’s perspective more clearly than you did at the tender age of eight. The framing of the picture is different from a child’s perspective than it is as an adult. This additional viewpoint doesn’t in any way negate your eight-year-old’s feelings, it just adds another layer to them, puts them in a different frame of reference. It doesn’t say that your mother was right either. It just adds depth to your picture.
In any good portrait, there is so much more there than what is happening center stage.
Each object on the canvas is filled with meaning, depth and symbolism for the enrichment of the whole. Discovering the many layers adds challenge but also joy to the scene, with a better appreciation for how complex and rich your life is.
When you reframe the canvas of your life, you make a choice.
You can decide, with every picture you have created in your mind, what the framing will be. You don’t change the scene itself, because those are the paint strokes that have created your own personal work of art. With each image, though, you can delve deeper while at the same time standing back and observing, to decide if the framing you have given each of them is still helpful now. If not, look to refurbishing.
Your life is a work of art
Your life is a beautiful work of art, an adventure portrait in which you are the primary character. And yes, that statement holds true whether you are experiencing light or dark days right now.
Ultimately, we are all parts of the same story, the same work of art.
Although we each have our own stories, there are common themes that occur throughout history to which we can all relate on some level. These stories become archetypes, or symbolic frames, for our individual portraits. This is where the hero, the villain and the victim from last week come back into the picture, and these are only three in a vast array of possible frames that can surround your personal portrait. It is these themes that give us a shared language about our individual struggles and triumphs. In this way, we can see that we are more alike than different, that you are not alone. Let me say that again - you are not alone and if you feel that you are, then please, reframe the canvas of your life.
Dr. Molly
This sounds a bit like “No pressure: No Diamonds.” I will have to think how I can present this to my Monday yoga class who now look forward to my, or your, Monday words of wisdom. It is relative to the gentle slow journey into an aligned asana. A change from listening to me saying “Don’t worry, it’ll come”
Comment by Cordelia Rose — December 15, 2008 @ 2:25 pm