You’ll Never Make a Living…

Young people of any age don’t naturally hesitate to make art in clay, paint, colored pencils, even mud, according to what’s available. They may act in impromptu plays, sing original songs, or write stories or poems or sagas, never bothering to worry about flaws if an adult doesn’t tell them they’re making fools of themselves while making a mess.

“What good are the arts?” a cranky parent once asked me, glaring at me for wasting their children’s precious time in my theater classes. They couldn’t predict the former students who thanked me forty-five years later for helping them avoid suicide during high school by reintroducing imagination and comradery into their lives, for endowing their beings with meaning beyond the gradebooks and sports teams. We dared to have fun while learning responsibility, time management, organization, teamwork, and an appreciation for words and music. Everyone was welcome.

In another setting, I taught debate and interpretive readings. The students wrestled with current events and possible solutions to political problems. Only a very few collected awards. However, former students who weren’t lauded for greatness later told me how they used their sense of presence as well as logic and evidence and even persuasive timing to prosper in vastly different careers. Most of all, they used self-confidence…if they hadn’t accidentally been convinced that not winning demonstrated inadequacy.

This past weekend during our writers’ discussion and book sale in Trinidad, CO, adult visitors shyly admitted to me that they’d like to write one day. One day? Which day? How long will they wait? What happened to the children who weren’t afraid to take time to express themselves? What happened to the children who didn’t think in terms of success and failure at all? What happened to the society that realized the true values of life can’t be deposited in bank accounts?

The arts exist to expand the person. They don’t have to lead directly to lucrative careers to be worthwhile. We give our children toys for holidays that dictate what they should do with them as though they’re the robots we fear. They have molds for their clay and numbered spaces for their paint. They have stories from television or film to re-enact in video games with pre-set rules. We accidentally tell the children and ourselves that nothing we could create would be worthy beside the shiny prepared experiences we can buy. But we’re wrong. That’s how entertainments and entertainers are born.

Adults need never relinquish hobbies they like to do whether or not they make money or garner praise. We feed our minds and souls and improve our health. We need to have fun and feel present regardless of how we make a living. Writing provides an audience for our deepest thoughts or emotions even if the writing itself doesn’t merit publication in a mercenary world.

Pleasing an audience is not the only possible point of original art any more than getting an “A” was the only reason we went to school. We needed to know we had things to say, dances to perform, clothing to fashion. We needed to grow, to become. Exploring who you are in all your layers at any age and who you could be if you wanted to transform is the point. Imagination inspires science and invention as well as play and literature. Being showered with riches isn’t the happy ending. Life is dreary and encourages people to sink into dark holes of envy and resentment if they’re trapped without adequate personal expression, love, and self-appreciation. No wonder so many feel the need to hate others. Someone or something has taught them to secretly despise themselves.