RESILIENCE: RISING UP FROM DARKNESS
BEAUTY CAN BE FOUND IN THE MOST UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCE
Resilience.
Managing expectations while managing my emotions.
Resilience.
Making a conscious choice, every day, to come back to myself while emerging as someone new.
Resilience.
Letting go of pre-conceptions to allow each present moment to simply happen. Resilience.
Accepting the unknown while dreaming about a better future. Resilience.
Clearing my present reality of toxic energies and people from my past while focusing on forgiveness. Resilience.
It’s strange how we can take so many things for granted.
We assume trees will grow. We assume the Earth will provide us food for us to harvest. We assume water will keep flowing in our rivers and oceans and we never, ever doubt the fact that the sun will rise in the morning and set in the evening.
Perhaps the biggest mistake we make is living our lives seemingly assuming we’ll always be there to witness these phenomenons.
If anything, the current pandemic is teaching us about resilience on a global scale.
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Like most people, there was a point in time where I succumbed to social pressure and stopped listening to my heart’s calling. At 26-years-old, I got a 9 to 5 job in a big company in Silicon Valley. Friends and family were proud of me: I was making my place in the corporate world and I was on my way to having a solid and successful career in marketing.
There was only one issue, I hated it.
Not so much because of the job itself, but because I couldn’t find my bearings. I had a hard time relating to my co-workers, I was struggling to understand those casual and friendly, yet superficial encounters that happen in a corporate workspace and I was in a constant internal battle between exposing my true self and changing who I am in order to fit in.
I didn’t listen to my heart’s calling.
I was rigid, stuck in all the things I thought I should be doing instead of listening to myself and the transformations happening on a much deeper level. This inner turmoil affected my work.
When the company decided to let me go after eleven months, I should’ve seen it coming… but I didn’t. The news hit me like a bulldozer. Because of my highly sensitive personality, the blow felt like a deadly punch right in the pit of my gut.
Depression is a nasty business.
Through taking care of myself and my mental health, I learned to become more resilient. I learned to accept myself in each passing, ephemeral moment.
I learned to rejoice in being able to go outside for a walk on a sunny day.
I learned to appreciate the beauty around me because it helped me stay connected to positive emotions.
I learned to let go of my inner critique and respect the moments in my life where I couldn’t work because each little effort was taking all my energy.
I learned to pacify my mental darkness by surrounding myself with bright colors. I painted and painted, using the brightest colors I could find, as an antidote to my inner darkness and as a way to bring light and beauty around me.
“Colour the outside until the inside surrenders”, I thought.
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I started working on the collection “Resilience” 5 years ago. I found a method to create paintings that show different colors, shapes, and reflections according to the light shining on them at different times of the day.
I liked the fact it made each moment so special.
I enjoyed each instant staring at my paintings knowing I had to appreciate the now because the light and the sun’s movements are ever-changing. And philosophically, I liked the fact that, at the end of the day, it all comes back to darkness.
Because darkness is part of life as much as light and colors.
Because every new day we have the chance to witness on this Earth is a blessing.
And because, as much as it all goes back to darkness at some point, from darkness can emerge the most beautiful creations.