By Ekta Patel
“Poems will not bring food on the table. Soliloquies will not guarantee a roof over your head.”
A teenager with a flair and passion for writing or acting is often told by a concerned parent: “You can do all that in your free time, but focus on studying for something substantial. These things are hobbies, not something you can give your life to.” What it comes down to is results.
Parents often think that immediate results are what make success possible. A regular job offers money. An unconventional job is an unsteady income, spelling disaster. A struggling artist with unsold paintings, an unpublished author, an unknown photographer, an unheard pianist, a poor philosopher, an unemployed architect, a homeless sculptor are all social misfits because they cannot make money, because they do not have immediate results.
What about the joy of working? Where is the value for true craftsmanship? Is there no appreciation for the ability to conceive of something special, see it in the mind’s eye as real, and then manifest it? What is the price of successful self-expression?
Self-expression has creativity as a tool and individuality as a motive. The price is the thrill, the ecstatic acknowledgment of fulfilling a dream. Each work of art, each drawing or building or poem, picture or dress, is the realization of a little dream, and it is priceless.
Those who live by it are willing to share with the world that which is truest in them, which defines and shapes them. They are free spirits, living to bring out all that is overwhelmingly crying out to them for liberation and birth in the world. They seek nothing but the freedom to do what they do best. Not often are they granted this request. And who refuses them? Most often, it is family.
Sadly, the strong family bond, so widespread in South Asia, is repeatedly the biggest obstacle for these free spirits. They succumb to parental pressure and take a ‘steady job’ and make money and are outwardly successful. In reality, their parents, in all consciousness, have broken their wings and killed them inside.
Alternative careers are just as valuable as conventional ones, if not more. We all have something unique to contribute, something that brings purpose in our lives. To find the gift of true expression in ourselves, in whatever form, is our raison-d’être, and we all deserve encouragement for it.
Give your children freedom of expression. They have something new and special. Let them discover it. You will be surprised and overjoyed at what beauty and ingenuity you will come across.
