160. Let Your Children Run Free

You’ve been practicing your art for a long time. Your work is getting better, more sophisticated and more interesting. Or at least it seems that way to you. You know your judgment is far from objective, and it doesn’t mean others would think the same.

The problem is that you’re isolated. You’ve been working quietly on your own. Other than a few close friends, no one has seen your work. You feel a need for some kind of recognition. You don’t mean fame. You just mean someone to see what you’ve made and give their opinion of it.

You’re saying something with your work but there’s no one listening and no one responding. You know the solution is to share your creations. You cannot continue working in secret. But releasing your creations into the world is daunting. They are your children and you worry about their fate. What if no one likes them? What if they’re met with ridicule? What if the criticism is unbearable?

But there is no alternative. Your children are lonely. They need other people to survive just as much as you do. Without recognition, without the response of the other, they cannot grow into anything at all. Before you brought them into the world they were trapped in the prison of your mind, and now they’re locked away in the prison of secrecy. You know you have to set them free. They have needs just as you do, and one of those needs is freedom.

Still, the terrible possibility that your children will be criticized to death lingers. Sometimes it haunts you late into the night, keeping you from the peace of sleep. What comes of an artwork that is shared and then rejected? What comes of the artist? These questions are too much for you to fully ponder. Fortunately, the answers are unimportant. You know what you must do. You must allow your work to live and grow. You must let your children run free.