The Examined Life

Well it looks like a dramatic winter/spring is coming to an end and things are lightening up with summer here. I've been trying to expand my mind, wrap it around bigger, odder concepts like questioning why I take for granted that the people I am close to are gonna have similar approaches and responses to mine. I know I'm someone who likes to examine my life, my motivations and goals, I want to be able to answer the question "why" if somebody asks me about my actions, but a lot of the people I am close to, would really rather not examine themselves in this way and that's perfectly aceeptable.

Maybe this comes from my studio practice where visitors frequently ask me "why"? Why did you use shiny paint , why is it so large, why is that part so drippy, why are the lines so rough .....etc etc etc.

This kind of thinking happens outside of the studio too, so if you ask me why I got mad when someone blew me off I can probably tell you that it has to do with some insecurity I've had since I was a kid and my divorced dad wouldn't show up to take me to dinner or something like that. I don't think it's better to be this way, to be able to explain what my motivations are, it just is the way I am. In fact I rarely think one way of anything is better than the other and I hope I don't think of myself as "Superior" in some way. My screen name came about from a love of my local skateboard shop "Supreme" and a belief that we are all supreme, we are all children of god and therefore all equal. I guess one thing that happens to gay folks, like myself , is that we realize we are different from the norm, that there IS a norm and that all of it must be questioned and that some things about ourselves we can't change (our sexuality, our race, our sex....etc) and some things we can (Our outlook, our habits, they way we treat others, etc). I feel very special in this regard, to have this kind of insight that so many things are choices, like choosing to be happy or miserable. I still have a lot more wisdom to be gained in this regard and for me, that's a big part of what makes life worth living...