No doubt action is adventure but the roots of action lies in learning, and learning sometimes comes with boredom. So everytime a learning bore me, I resort to action in the form of creation. Creating patterns, doodling lotuses and leaves, curves, etc., is a pass time activity for me. One evening, I was getting bored from work, and then saw a printout of some design usually for children to colour in my organisation. So instead of colouring, I began creating intricate patterns out of boredom, which I was not sure how it would come out. I create in piece by piece one or two patterns a day, and it took me 27 days to figure out what I was creating consciously or unconsciously. I figured out that I created some sort of mandala without any previous experience or artistic know-how.
After figuring out the art, I searched about mandala, which is a detail-oriented, geometric art form consisting of intricate circles, lines, and repeated patterns. Originating from Sanskrit meaning “circle,” mandalas typically radiate from a central point and extend outwards.
These 27 days of creation have been full of learnings that gave me perspectives into our life through art, which I would prefer penning.
First and prime was the process has been very immersive, as I was creating on the sidelines of the work, it might have led me to escape from the work but on the contrast, it boosted my focus, and every time, I tried to escape, it brought me back in the present, making me more conscious about the work I was doing. In life, in our own life, we try to find escape places to get away from reality and some of us get trapped in it so much that we lost our sense of self and the reality and returning back becomes as tough as cracking a nut open through a needle.
While creating the art, some lines went thick and some curves fine, others looked more plainer. Every design was imperfect in its own way, no two curves of the same pattern looked similar. While creating, I was blurred about how this piece looks, but after completion, it all made sense. You see in life, in your life, it’s not uniform, it’s full of thick and thin, some curves are flatter, some are chaotic, no two courses are alike, no two ways lead to destiny of same kind, or bring happiness of equal order. It’s all about being patient and perseverant, believing that in the end it will all make sense.
Mandala is a perfect art piece of imperfect designs. You try to create alike, somehow you end up making 6 lines in place of 5. You see, we humans are also full of imperfections and flaws, but our main character hides all. All we can keep our conscience awake, to accept, forgive and let go of things. For me, my art was full of imperfections, but for some random person, it’s beautiful – a wow art. You see in your life, you complain, you suffer, you cry for the odd events, but to the one who views it from another end, it seems perfect. My friends who watch me on social media have a perception of me living a perfect life, so how can we have peace with our imperfections? I am leaving this question open to you to brood on!
Having repetition of things or having patience for a long time sometimes makes you lose the track you are working on, things become hazy, brain gets cluttered in constant chaos. It has happened with me for a moment, in a swing of haze, I lost the sense of pattern I was creating. We can get back on track by tracing our steps back, taking a deep breath, and so I did. See, you have to be conscious of what went wrong, why it went wrong and get back on track, I call this resilience, one must endeavour to build resilience to come out of odds.
It takes a quantum of courage to begin something new, so if I look me doing mandala, I also get stuck after finishing half of it with no clue of how to move forward, You see, this also happen in life, we gett struck in our path midway or sometimes fear to break old patterns to step into something new, take a chance out of courage or just out of curiosity. I took a chance to break the pattern and step into a new design. After I finished it, it looks wonderful. Believing in yourself is the key to break the barriers and step forward.
I haven’t seen such art in detail ever, but I have a point to put While designing the centre of Mandala, I was just filling spaces with curves, little did I know I was creating a design from little bit similar to a print of my bed sheet. You see consciously or unconsciously we are influenced by our surrounding be it friends, religion, market, family, anything which we go through daily, we are imbibing their ideas, patterns, functioning into us. Utmost care and caution have to be given to our surroundings to drive our life in a better direction.
After completion, when I researched more about Mandala, I came to know that it teaches non-attachment through sand mandala rituals. In this ritual, monks spend days in creating complex geometric patterns representing universe through coloured grains of sand. Once completed, the mandala is ritualistically swept up and destroyed. This act serves as a powerful meditation on impermanence (anicca), teaching that nothing in the physical world lasts forever, or non-attachement. This is something I am yet not upto, I get too attached to my creation, I got it framed to gift it to someone close, but attachment to my creation doesn’t let me do that, I fear if it falls and breaks. Again I am leaving a question open for you to brood on, How to bring non-attachement to our own creation?
I am exploring the field of art as a therapy, and I do believe in co-creating and exchanging learning, any similar or different experience is welcomed through comments.
iVolunteer Blog - everything about volunteering 