A picture is a delineation of a person, place, and/ or anything intended to be shown and hence, be seen. It serves various purposes. It helps in retrieving information about something in form of memory; pleasant and/or not. It can also be used as a means for conviction, as well as confusion, depending on the intention.
A picture tells a thousand words it’s been popularly said — by many polymaths.
Painting a picture is different on the other hand.
It is a metaphor for a lot of things.
When we paint a picture, it’s mostly a parody. Pretense. Lies. Keeping up with…(whoever we deem worthy enough to be beckoned upon).
When we paint a picture, we’re leaving behind the life we live and starting to emulate the ideas and styles of others — simulated to be ours.
We mostly do so to either cover up our mistakes or vulnerability by giving off a fake persona of an either strong, able, and/or willing individual — as opposed to who we truly are.
We paint a picture when we’re tired of being who we are. Maybe because we haven’t gotten to know us well enough to decipher the good parts, as well as, or only the bad parts— and so we run.
We paint a picture because it’s always the easier way out — although we know at the back of our minds it would surely come back to haunt us.
We paint a picture when we don’t know how to spend some time alone, embrace and deal with the negative inflective aspects of us.
Painting a picture comes because we refuse to accept us in its entirety and too far from being self-aware to adopt changes that’d elevate us.
Painting a picture, although it comes off easier in the end, it’s always tedious in the process as that would require a perpetual ‘painting’ process to keep keeping on.
But we can break that cycle.
We can stop living to meet up with the joneses.
We can end the agony of having to live our lives on adopted theories and beliefs on who we think we should be.
We can for once, develop a healthy mental scopophobia which would enable us indeed, ascertain clearly, reasons why we keep exhibiting fake personas and stop it or rather, be selective over where or what we ‘pose’ for and not.
This is when we find us. Discover who we were truly meant to be. Not told to be. And be it.
This is when we develop the confidence to live ourselves and forgo the fear of folk tales and tell tales that may arise before and thereafter respectively.
This is when we say enough. Take charge of the mental camera and hence, redirection of its lens to the true version of us.
This is when we allow vulnerability — with all its messiness and ugliness rear its ugly head for once and be fine with it — as uncool and uncomfortable as we’d normally be about it.
This is when we begin to relay and relate, as humans. Human beings who are inherently flawed — who are also bound to be emotional, erratic, sensitive, afraid, and ingrained with the constant quest for perfection.
This is when the peace of mind gets restored. As you come to the eureka moment where you engulf the universal truth, that we’re all actually trying to paint a picture. That living is an act on its own. And that we’re all trying to scale through.
That’s the hour where you conclude that it’s totally worth it to paint a you, rather than a picture — because you now also realize that life’s too short not to.
