"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint, ' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." Vincent Van Gogh On last Wednesday I went trough my family albums. It is always fun to see my childhood photos. Suddenly it hit me – my early year's photos show a self-confident happy boy. No fears, no awkwardness, no shyness. I’ll bet your album shows the same thing. As I turned more and more pages of that album, I could see the process of that confident child turning more shy and awkward. The same eyes that looked straight into the camera, now are trying to hide from the camera. What changed? What is causing that transformation? Sure there are some kids that have this built-in self-confidence that lasts. We all know them, …show more content…
In my opinion, what happened is – society. Society is a great thing. Friend family and lows and community – all of these are there to protect us. The downside is that community brings with her judgment, criticism and sarcasm. As we grow up our parents and other adults, start to teach us things. After all, they are our tour guides to society… They do this with good intention but this process brings up judgment. You do something incorrectly (in their opinion) they correcting you. You reluctantly feel wrong. You make an effort to avoid this criticism next time. Becoming less spontaneously is unavoidable. You become calculated person. You are thinking about everything you want to say or do. Parents do it. Teachers do it. Almost every adult in our surroundings unknowingly helps us building our awkwardness and fear of …show more content…
The Seagull is free to do what he does. We lost his freedom. We lost our self-confidence. We can no longer fly as we want, so we stay on the ground. Because most people are afraid of change and fear new places, they stay at whatever job they have. They stay in the places they know and are reluctant to try new things. Self-confidence is like the spine of our being; when we lack it we are mentally paralyzed. We feel stuck. We think we are inside a cage, cage built from our fears and lack of