Lessons I learned from a clay pot

All I know, it was a Friday night, I was tired and I wanted to simply just go home. Sometimes, though, there is someone who wants to teach you something...and you stop being the teacher and become the student. It was more than just making a coil pot without the benefit of a potter's wheel, or the feeling of actually rendering something with my hands. It was seeing how much my life had changed. I let the moment hit me...let it sink in. Here I was sitting, pounding out the clay...trying to make it just perfect and my old life came rushing back.

I shot a few pictures and had to laugh, because we all were tired after a long week. We had taught for hours and hours...had gone out to dinner, had a few drinks and now we were sitting here on a Friday night trying to be creative, but the real goal was simply to have fun and to relax.

In my mind, I went back to the moment where I jumped off the cliff. The moment when I made a conscious effort to follow my dreams instead of building up a career I no longer felt any joy from. The moment when I realized I was a ghost in a machine, a part of something that seemed to destroy lives instead of helping them...and I no longer believed in the illusions.

In my neighborhood, there is an 'art gallery' for very young children. I smile every time I walk by the window at their renderings. I see the dreams planted here and it made me think of my own dreams. The ones that I chose to follow instead of let die like an unwatered plant. I also thought about what my life would have been like had I remained where I was. More complicated than it needed to be. To be at the pinnacle of an industry, which in retrospect, is much like a self-licking ice cream cone. It feeds to satisfy itself. It had grown proud and refused to change. It was a self-determined machine that didn't count the human cost.

However, when I stood looking at this display...the handiwork of children for the public to view...I smiled and realized it isn't a bad world after all. There are still dreamers that roam this earth who realize that it isn't about jumping off a cliff. It's seeing there is very little difference between illusion and reality.