Treachery
On the wall of my office, I have a collection of influential pictures. It is a literal mess. I share the wall with our garage. So every time we leave, the wall flexes and shifts from the air pressure. The frames dance on the wall.
I tried to address it but finally just embraced the mess. I even take less care with the spacing. The pictures are my creative inspiration, and creativity is messy. Just like life. Just like my wall.
Among my chaos is a reproduction of Rene Magritte’s The Treachery of Images. The original is an oil painting of a tobacco pipe and the phrase “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Which is French for “This is not a pipe.”
Counter intuitive at first, but it isn’t a pipe. It is a picture of a pipe. Actually, it is a painting of the image of a pipe. Well, mine is a copy of a painting of an image of a pipe, but you get the idea.
Words are tricky. Sometimes they even get in the way of what we are trying to say. Sometimes it's hard to hear the message hidden in the words. I have shortcuts, habits, and experiences that influence what I hear. I have to be charitable or extra patient to hear the intention.
Am I embracing the messiness of creating? Is my word choice distracting from my message? Am I letting my feelings about a word obscure your intentions? Can I be more charitable in how we communicate?
Be curious, be kind, be whole, do good things.
As a species we have excelled because we’re really good (and driven) to categorize/sort things we see and to find shortcuts whenever we can. That may have helped the hunter gatherers or the proto-humans find ingenious ways of survival, but it sure can cause a mess when we aren’t present enough to fully see what’s going on with those around us or our situation.