The Magic Within
There has always been a creative force within me – this is also something I started to call magic. Something unexplainable but undeniable. It flows through my entire body, my mind, my life.
I spent many years trying to box it in so I could be more "practical," more "logical," more like someone people could explain.
But the thing is, it always found a way out. It was my opportunism – when I saw and seized an opportunity others didn't notice or were too afraid to take.
It was my way of thinking outside the box.
It was me seeing through other people's masks and seeing the real person behind the trauma, the pain, the walls.
That creative force is both observant and active: it analyzes, recognizes patterns and opportunities, and creates something new from them.
That creative magic sees my pain as something meaningful, something that can be transformed into anything.
Art.
Something that can help me get out of my darkness.
And something that can help others get out of theirs.
Art is a form of communication: between the present and the past, between people who will never know each other.
We are all interconnected through this form of communication. It changes our minds. It rewires our brains.
If you want to change the world, change yourself.
If you want to change the world, create art.
One person cannot change the world, but they can change people, who can later change other people, and at the end of the day all these small but meaningful changes become a huge wave. You cannot force the tide to change direction, but you can become part of it and, through your presence, influence where it goes.
Whatever.
I wanted to talk about art and how pain can be transformed into something meaningful.
When we face our fears and traumas, we get the chance to create something meaningful. To find a reason, a destiny, a purpose, whatever you want to call it, behind all the suffering. To help others.
Of course, no one wants to suffer so they can save others, especially complete strangers.
But suffering and pain happen anyway.
Why not use them for something good?
Why not use them to lessen the pain in a world so deeply wounded?
There are so many people out there suffering in silence, isolated, not asking for help.
A piece of art can change those people's lives.
There were countless times when, as a teenager, I escaped my loneliness through novels. I experienced happiness, discovered new perspectives, and gained inner wisdom. They carried me through hard times when I had no one to talk to, and whenever I tried to ask the adults around me for help, all I got was pushback and the invalidation of my feelings.
It is not an exaggeration to say that if art hadn't existed, I probably wouldn't exist either.
I wouldn't have been able to survive twelve years of listening to my dad blackmail me with threats that I would find him hanging from the roof because he wanted to kill himself.
I heard it countless times.
And the shame I felt because of that alcoholic bastard.
How he abused my dog, and how I could do nothing against it.
How I watched him slowly die and found him dead in his room at Christmas.
I carried far too much baggage that should have never been mine, and there was nothing I could have done about it.
And those who were brave enough to write, draw, or paint their own pain helped me survive. Not just survive, but survive with greater self-awareness and the belief that I could become better.
That there is a way out of the darkness, even if I don't yet know where it is.
Those people, those pieces of art, were my guiding lights out of the darkness.
And now it is time for me to use my own magic and become a guiding light as well.