Yesterday I was at the gym with my 24 year old son. He’s a stud, literally. He has sculpted his compact frame into taunt muscles and sinewy stride. His straight shoulders, filled out with muscle and brawn narrow perceptively well to his waist. His intense dedication to practice and perseverance is relentless and on the soft side of addiction to perfection.

Ironically from his perspective he has miles to go before he reaches the results he’d like to achieve. He’s studying to become a fitness trainer in combo with nutrition and marital arts. He probably gets the perfectionism from me. His dad is a perfectionist as well so my kids didn’t stand a chance. I apologize all the time to them for my transgressions as a mom in this department.

The reason I feel this is an important topic is we seldom see our own beauty, our special uniqueness. I can vouch for this. When I’m asked to close my eyes and drop my arms to my sides to match my hips, consistently  my arms are two to three inches beyond what is real. Shows what my internal image is of myself verses the reality. I feel my son is in the same category. I don’t feel this is unique to our family either but rather pandemic due to the huge barrage of media images and every machine now dedicated to eliminating years from our bodies.

I feel we – I – instead could use a dose of seeing the Art within ourselves, the art and beauty in others. If we were to see ourselves as a canvas on which we can paint, outline, change, sculpt, shade and lighten anything and everything about ourselves and then visualize the final canvas, we could feel, sense and be the image in our minds. Our own beautiful masterpiece. A Leonardo exquisite beauty, a romantic Waterhouse poet, a Gauguin islander, a Watteau flirt. Enjoy the magic of the colors, the brushes, the composition. Perhaps then the flaws would be the brushstrokes of ingenuity, courage, the stories behind the wrinkles steeped in love and lore. Choose the subject, be the image. Have fun as you paint yourself in vivid colors, the background as important as you the subject.

And if you choose to have a master painter share in the composition we can then compare our tales of the artful journey together.

Cosmic sunshine to you.