almost trash to treasure
One of my most favorite artworks in my home is this collage of pastel colored lines and markings. (the cover on this post)
The artist will likely never know she is even featured in my home. A quiet young girl in my classroom who just loved to paint. They were the left overs, the edges bearing the markings of time and practice, of patience and planning.
Little marks that breathed life to a final piece.
While the art itself was precious, there was something else that spoke to me. I’d often need to help a student fit their piece for a mat and while I was cutting away these edges I wondered…
How many times do we overlook these little markings in our own life, consider them trash even? These tiny brush strokes and dots and color variations all held very specific meaning to the whole of the creation itself.
These markings spanned over time and went from edge to middle and back again, birthing the shape of the main event. Without these markings - this time, this practice, this extra space that allowed for mistakes, room to grow and to try and fail (and try again) - there wouldn’t be a whole piece.
Perhaps we find ourselves believing that these parts don’t matter - or worse, we’re ashamed of them. Or for the perfectionist in the room, perhaps you try our hardest to avoid even making them.
But when I look at them here and reflect back, I find they tell a hidden story.
These edges, gracing the center, held the entire piece together and spoke of the journey.
Too often we look at our time here as linear, because time itself as we perceive it, is linear. The minutes tick on and the years go by, but in a lot of ways, how our story unfolds is anything but linear. The grand picture is not a destination we should expect to just arrive at someday. Our entire life is a piece of artwork with beautifully messy edges. We might dwell on the fringe, make a mark and then come back to the middle…But each mark that we make in the canvas of our life contributes to the sum of this master piece.
Rarely seen, sometimes hidden, and often overlooked, growth and transformation often happen on these edges.
What I understood in this moment was how our marks on the edges contribute to what is revealed in the middle. And that maybe we’d rather conceal those messy edges in favor of a beautifully finished work of art.
But when we are aren’t pleased with our own edges, suppress the marks of our true nature, cover up our pain and failures, white out our quirks and flaws, gloss over our gifts and abilities, dull down our wins and passions, and mute our story and testimony: we lose out on participating in the story, because we’ve sacrificed all of the colors of our authenticity in favor of something that cannot be real without them.
Yet, when we truly know that the mark of authenticity is one of the most beautiful marks to behold, we’ll never discard the edges again. We’ll gaze at them with gratitude and honor them for their value and place in our lives because, while we were busy shaping something, our practice marks were shaping us.
And so - I realized when I framed this many years ago, that I want my life’s frame to display it all:
the overlooked messy discarded edges and the ultimate work they contribute to.