Painting.
I see a painting in front of me,
This painting is of mine,
But I did not create it,
People did.
But this painting,
Does not come close to defining my beauty,
But I still chose to believe it,
And portray it.
I choose do this,
Because I will have to tear down the canvas in front of me,
To make a new painting of mine,
A real painting of mine.
A painting,
That defines my real beauty and my real flaws,
But I a lazy painter,
Do not want to paint a new one.
I choose to believe the old painting,
Because I fear the empty canvas,
I fear the colours,
The pretty and ugly ones.
The fear in my heart,
Stops me,
Stops me for being a painter,
A painter of my own portrait.
Overview of the poem
The poem is based on the theme of Self-discovery and it is one of the my favourite poems. I conceived the idea for this poem, last year. I exactly do not remember my emotions when I wrote the poem but whenever I revisit this poem it always makes me feel in a certain way. I cannot exactly put the feeling in words but that feeling is special and warm.
Since I was a child it has often been that I always listened and internalised people's opinion of me. I never gave myself a chance to formulate an opinion on m myself. Few days back, some people told something about me to me and it made me go down this rabbit down of self doubt. I could not stop thinking about what they told me. The opinions that they gave me were similar to the ones that I heard as a child. I found myself in the same place of self doubt and self hatred, the same place that I was in when I was a child.
That incident brought me back to this poem. It made me ask questions to myself: Why am I letting people create my portrait ? What is blinding me to my potential? Is it the fear ? Why am I scared ? Am I giving the world a little too much power? Shouldn't I be the artist instead of the world being the artist?
All of these questions made me realise that self love is not only the important component, but self discovery is very much important too . You cannot love something unless you understand the thing that you have to love. I know that does not really make any sense, but without knowing yourself well enough , you cannot accept or love yourself. I know it is mid march and it is too late to keep a New year's resolution but if I had to keep one now, it would be that I need to learn more about myself and define myself. I will be the version of "Me", that I want to be and not the version of "Me" that world wants me to be.
THANK YOU 💟
-MJM.
