SELF ARTISTS
… self-drawn into life as we know it
Saturday Aug. 2, 2014
Stargazers probe space in search of intelligent life as we know it.
What do we know of that?
Can we define it?
Are we defining ourselves, our species, our type – our friends, family and neighbours?
We can blame or credit those who put us in this intelligent life as we know it predicament.
None of us asked for this, but here we are - born, the consequence of parents mating.
Without debating merits of their motivations, social morass or deciding, or reason … they made us.
Arrived, naked, unafraid – shaped by environment – by them, then schools and media, society, friends, temptations – to become who we are.
Little wonder some exclaim, ‘this is not who I am’.
So, who are we?
Purpose in life – reason we live, reason we thrive and thrill to be alive – at root of so much.
Don’t fret.
Seriously, who has time to go deep on subjects so deep?
As this collective ‘we’ gets older – viewing life through choice-lenses:
Fewer opportunities, or many?
Great joys, or great remorse?
Endless summers or endless regret?
Choice lists are endless, yet choosing is simple.
Choose life we want or be resigned to someone else assigning life to us, determining its meaning, leaving us out of that equation.
Rest of the world, everyone, has their own rows to plow.
We plow our own path.
Pull up our own socks.
Like an artist’s kit – we are brush, we are paint.
We are artist.
We are canvas.
We need to paint (or write, or draw, do clerical work, dig ditches) as if our work is the finest of art.
We can.
We choose.
Or lose.
Mark Kolke
196,016
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: 15C/58F, overcast with both heat and thunderstorms in the forecast, long weekend began with a leisurely stroll with rabbit and magpie distractions in abundance for Gusta 
