On Dropping Fixed Ideas

Rob Brezsny wrote in my horoscope, “Drop fixed ideas you might have about what’s possible and what’s not.”

Like many people, I grew up socialized to believe that I “could” do something and “could not” do something else. Even though my mother did her best to help me see and believe in my potential, she was not the only social influence in my life. Factors of my upbringing also played a role in what I heard, paid attention to, adhered to. For a lot of my life I believed what I “could” or “could not” do was fixed and unchanging.

I’ve written in my blog before about rebelling and fighting against these fixed ideas of what my art could and should be, based on traditional work or other people’s expectations. It is not easy to go against the grain, but I am finding it easier than I feared because what is possible is very rarely “fixed” and instead merely a socialized belief.