29 Faces #1

Merry May Day! This is a month of challenges for me, make no mistake. The way I see it, if I don't push myself to expand, no one else will. Today starts the 29 Faces in May, and while I first chose to forgo it, I knew I would still choose to focus on faces, so I said, "What the hell?"

This morning, with eyes closed, I pondered the differences between fears and challenges. I'm a pretty fearless person, yet a couple of fears have recently surfaced for me, and I'm grappling with them. As I sat with these musings, I realized that, for me, the fear is born of potential consequences that may come from accepting a challenge. While the two fear-born challenges I currently face are very different, I saw that the fears are both rooted in injury. Potential injury.

Nobody likes to be hurt. Well, most folks don't. I don't. In any event, I was reminded of my longstanding relationship with risk … if we never take a risk, we never allow ourselves the opportunity to stretch, expand, grow. And if injury is only a possibility, why let it freeze us?

Drawing and painting faces is new to me (in my adult life), and it's a joyous challenge to take on this month, for there is no risk of injury in it … so this challenge will serve to temper the other challenges I face.

That's what I made today. Peace.