Did you know that Paper takes anywhere between 30 minutes to 3 days to be made and Glass takes about 3 to 7 days?
Well, it’s not a shocking fact but you know paper can be made into anything without damaging its form whereas glass is something that can get shattered very easily and it takes longer to be made!
Does this mean that we shouldn’t use glass?
We still do,isn’t it? because if your Life’s masterpiece was made on a sheet of paper you would probably get it framed,right?
And what does a photo frame have? A boarder and Glass through which you can see that masterpiece..
I consider the paper to be your masterpiece or your Creativity and glass to be all of those hurdles and mental blockages that you went through in order to see that Creativity.
My own relationship with creativity has come a long way since last year. I’ve experimented a lot with it and I think that’s one of my stronger suits. 
I used to be a person with streamlined thinking, that is, for me life would be pretty simple. I’d think that I could complete my college, get a degree, get a job and that would be it. Following on the route that most people took. Anything that didn’t fit into this ‘formula’ of how things work, I found myself being completely closed to that idea. Considering this, I lost a lot of time and opportunities. I wouldn’t be open to any new idea that would be outside this formula that I had created.
I had conflicting interests where on one hand, I liked this formula however I never felt totally complete or satisfied following it but for some reason it felt right and on the other hand I liked doing the unconventional stuff where I could really use my creativity to do something more but here something felt out of place .It’s a very difficult itch to scratch. I thought that maybe I was missing something big in life and following this path wouldn’t lead me anywhere worthwhile. The path being the unconventional stuff.
So last year I tried to be more honest with myself in terms of my interests and limitations. I stopped looking at myself from a third person’s POV and started looking from a first person’s POV. I understood that in order to be comfortable you have to be honest with yourself and as simple as it sounds it’s something very difficult to do because sometimes you don’t realise that you might be dishonest with yourself.
Being uncertain about something is one thing and being dishonest with yourself is another thing. I would often do things because I felt that it would look more relevant on my resume and I never really enjoyed doing those. An incident comes to my mind when I talk about this. So I am a computer student and I loved coding but not the syntax part or the function part but the logical part where one would use logical reasoning to solve problems. I would usually pick up these really complicated or complex programs to work on in an attempt to show myself that maybe this is my calling but that only resulted in me being miserable and unmotivated to do something in college. I never realized that even though I was fond of it something never really clicked here.
I have been doing this really cool afro-brazillian martial arts called Capoeira as a hobby since a
few years and last year I had received an opportunity to showcase this braziallian culture at Boteco, a brazallian restaurant in Koregaon Park. Although I have been practicing Capoeira for a while I thought that performing in front of a bunch of people would be difficult but, to my surprise,it wasn’t. I mean that wasn’t the difficult part. I came, performed with my friends and had a good time afterwards as well. I realised that even though this wasn’t something that I do professionally ,something just clicked.
For many years I had created this white-collar-guy image in my head about myself and I had started to describe myself as such. I never understood that this image that I was creating was something that society would expect out of you, because of this anything unconventional that I would do, I just wouldn’t feel right about it, even though I liked doing it.
I started creating this filter which would prevent me from doing more, from stepping out of my comfort zone, to looking beyond the limiting possibilities and to actually be creative. I believe that I get my creative aspect from my mother since she used to be an artist when I was a kid and I, too, love experimenting with it which I have been doing since last year. I figured that external validation became very important to me, so much to a point that my own opinion of myself mattered less. I made a point to understand this pattern and to remove the underlying filter that I had created in my head.
In a way I understood that we should embrace our obstacles in order to know our true self. A photo frame would be useless if the glass that you are looking through is opaque, therefore we should acknowledge these obstacles for a good sense of self reflection. Like I said earlier glass takes more time to be made than paper however that’s the only investment that you require which is Time to get that clear glass without any damages or cracks through which you can have your creativity perfectly displayed on the paper behind it. Where you can hang that frame on a wall and take a step back to look at it with folded arms, perhaps if you look closely you might even see your own reflection in it!