Imagine walking into life blank, as in blank canvas. No expectations, no regrets. Whenever someone reaches out to you – there is no history in your mind, no thoughts, no hidden feelings – you just receive what you’ve been given. Be it love or violence, you receive it as is. You defend yourself if you have to, or you give yourself fully if you want to. You make no meaning of what you’ve been given, and after it’s over, you return back to the blank canvas, ready to give or receive more. Your memory retains what happened, minus the meaning, the drama, the pangs of guilt, the wish to turn time back and do something differently. Imagine seeing the people around you, knowing that what they do is only their own actions and they don’t mean anything about you. You are a blank canvas, and you only fill yourself with what you want, when you want. You can discard it at any moment and renew yourself.
What would love mean in such world? It would be the paint. The paint applied to your canvas, filling it with reds, blues, yellows, lavenders tones. Creating beauty in your heart. Others who would be giving you love would be the artists of life – your family, your friends, your neighbours. People who smiled at you on the street, people who told you thanks for letting them pass through the crowd, people making you your favourite cup of coffee. Little by little, your canvas would be filled with love. It would be your choice to shake it off and start each day new, blank again. And if someone would slash your canvas, poke a hole in it with a snide remark, tear it with pain and anger, you could simply stitch it back up, to a smooth sheet of fabric, taut on your frame, and you could paint on the scars, so that the next day you look like new. Without regrets, without expectation, imagine you would enter life blank each day. Give yourself to it fully, give yourself to others fully. Never asking for anything in return, never shaming yourself for mistakes you made, never looking back, always moving forward, always knowing, believing, that the happiness is in the now. That there is no past or future. That the past only stays so long on our canvas as we wish, and we can just wipe it off and cover ourselves with new paint.
What would living in such world mean? It would mean being a family – always, with everyone, bonded, together, without any expectations, without wants or haves or musts. Simply being. Giving. Receiving. Living. Being one even when being separate. In complete harmony. Naive. Back to being children. Back to reaching out to everyone and everything, with open heart. With open arms.
I’m attempting to be a blank canvas. I go out and trust people, but as soon as I feel a connection, I close off from fear, or I binge on connecting, at all times – also out of fear. What if I won’t connect like this anymore, what if this will pass? Or, what if I will be slashed into pain again, just like that one time? I’m in the future, or I’m in the past. I’m struggling to be in the now, to enjoy the now. To have no expectations, to have no regrets. I’ve been blank many times, when a little girl, but the slashes to my fabric have been so many, I couldn’t repair them fast enough. I left them torn, crying, not being able to have strength to lift my arms once more, to put the needle through one more tear, to stitch it all up. Even when it was torn to pieces, it kept being torn more, threads were being pulled out, one by one, until I was left bare, wooden frame. I covered myself in rags, to pretend like I’m whole, but never really making an effort to sew it all together. I knew it’d be violated again, so what’s the point? I moved on through life, and my rags covered up with a mixture of love from here and there, they even looked decent, and at one point I forgot it was not my canvas – I fooled myself completely. For the last year, I’ve been ripping the fake rags off, one by one, exposing the bare frame, and now I’m naked. Now I’m growing my blank canvas anew, thread by thread, from love around me, from love to myself. The fabric is not fully restored yet, and the winds of guilt, regret, and self-doubt still blow through me, but the base is strong, and one day I’ll receive my first dose of paint, then another, until a beautiful painting covers my soul. With love, without expectations, without regrets. I hope I’ll be able to walk into life blank then, and renew myself each day, and live in the now.
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