Life, They Said, Only Has Colour if You Paint it
I grew up with practical parents, supportive, wonderful parents who did everything they could financially and physically manage for me and my siblings but they were practical.
That meant, work hard, work harder and aim for reliable jobs like doctor, lawyer, teacher, nurse. They supported my love of photography, giving my the camera I still own and use, fifteen years later to do all the photography on this site but running off and being a freelancer, being a travel blogger, an artist, starving even after the rice, bean and broccoli dues of university, any of that, unthinkable. Not practical. Terribly uncertain and unsustaining.
Their view of a good life did not match mine.
Then again, go ask anyone what a good life is. You’ll get as many answers as people, possibly more, if some of those people have multiple ideas.
“Have a good life,” she said.
What’s that mean? That I haven’t? What is a good life?
“Have a successful career,” she said.
What’s that mean? That I haven’t? Well, it’s true I haven’t started. I’m twenty-seven and have only just kicked my butt out the door toward using my creative insanity for something more than road trip entertainment while I traveled Europe for two years. And I wanted to be like you.
All the best started at least when they were a minimum of four and a maximum of eighteen. Or so society has taught me.
They had rough lives. Uphill both ways and sideways too. In sinking sand. To built character of course. They went like lawn-mowers toward their fantasies, not content to just dream them up in stories. They were bulls through the red silk sheets, roaring against the dying of the light.
They probably fought, disagreed and moaned at or about parents, partners, prime ministers and that panda they talked to at the zo once, just because they could. And it shocked the adults.
Or they might have had parents who were as obsessive as they, who supposed, bashed and pushed until the child lived the parental dream of superstardoom.
Whatever that ambiguous alphabet soup is.
Or they might have had parents who ignored them to pursue their own dreams and the children occupied themselves with their own imagination and brilliance anyway.
They were the sort who laughed in the face of offence and giggled in sending it back because the world needs less defenders and more offenders. You can’t win a footie match without them.
This is the match for life.
Even if they were awkward, easily embarassed, introverted or mad hatters, they had more than enough shine to not bother with or about other people’s suns anyway. Then someone loud would find them and helicopters would descend. Lights bouncing and beaming in the treasure trove of brilliance. Personality doesn’t matter so much then. Usually. Sometimes. Probably.
“Have a good life,” she said.
How are you supposed to have a good life if you don’t live said life with vigour, passion and enthusiasm?
Shouting from every roof-top, screaming from every cliff-edge.
Clawing, fighting, biting and bashing against the dying of the sunlight.
They won’t wait for the day a man speaks on a bus, to say, “nine-hundred and nintey-nine stars. The sun is burning.”
No. They will kick down the padlock. Crash the door. Poke their head through and bring on the foretelling by being the prophet of their own future.
