I will always think too small about my own potential.
Left to my own impulses, I will always make the canvas of my possibility too small, and paint myself, with big, bright strokes, right into the corner.
Since I am both the painter and the canvas, I will think it a sufficient representation, even a bold one, but I cannot see it, so I do not know.
When I invite you into the gallery, you look upon the work I have created, you tilt your head, you take a step closer and immediately I know that you see it. You see that something is not quite right.
I ask, “What is it?”
And you say, “Well, it’s lovely, but it’s just so much smaller than I thought it would be.”
“What do you mean?” I protest. “It’s just how I imagined it!”
“Exactly!” you say, as my trusted colleague and friend. “That’s exactly the problem! You think you’ve stretched yourself to a new limit but you’ve only painted yourself into a corner. It’s too small a space for you!”
“No, no…,” I begin to protest further, but then I step back to look at my creation and I see, right away I see that you are right.
I had the choice of any canvas I wanted. The small ones were much too small and I am far beyond their limitations. But the large ones, the truly expansive ones, those are for the real painters, the ones who merit the largest possible expression of themselves.
And I chose the one in between, the one that would allow me to satisfy my too small definition of self.
You saw what I could not see. You helped me know what I could not know. That is why my development, my learning, is impossible without you.
Today, I buy a new canvas. “Will you come with me, please?”
