Starting to see the same thing differently

Why is the work of great artists so great? Because it deals with the same thing in a radically different way. Van Gogh didn't paint different sunflowers, he looked at them with different eyes. Which also made him paint them differently. Outrageously different. Unprecedentedly different. And therefore so reviled in his time. Because different and deviant: the world hates it.

And yet this very Corona crisis calls for different, different, unworldly, thinking and doing. Proclaim yourself an artist of life and take your chances.

How? By approaching the same words and feelings that every person knows differently. Learn to treat them like clothing.

Scared, angry, lonely or sad? Of course, you can be. But that doesn't mean you have to put on that feeling. You are not forced to be drawn by it.

Therefore, don't automatically put on what most people are already wearing. What is in fashion. Lay your anxiety pants, panic shirt or worry skirt down on your bed, spread them out and let them tell their story. Not in silence, in "thought," but by writing them down and then reading them aloud. This will prevent them from secretly developing into an ulcerous wound to begin with.

After which you "only" listen to what you hear yourself read. Like you would listen to a good friend in mourning telling his story for the thousandth time.

Take your time. Sit, be still and become present to what the speaker in you, the listener in you is offering. Without any rebuttal or commentary. Just as the sea proclaims no opinion about a burst of rain.

The miracle that happens to you then: as if from heaven, new garments are handed to you. Fresh, fresh, life-giving thoughts and feelings. Which do not come from a booklet-"think positive"-but from the heart of your being.

Depressed, anxious, restless? Think Rembrandt or Van Gogh, Stravinsky or Bach: skill yourself into hearing the same thing differently, seeing it differently. You can learn to do that here.

If you can sing with the angels you would be crazy to keep crying with the wolves, wouldn't you?