Who we are as people has a great deal to do with our personal sub-total of our lives experiences so far. Our ideals, our thought processes, our motivations, and ultimately our personal interactions with other humans, are all derivative of how our unique experiences have shaped us.
Regardless of what we have experienced or observed, how we decide to view that experience, while we are in the middle of it, or it is in our past, will be added to our integrated collective.
While environmental and circumstantial components have definitely left a footprint, the most profound experiences that have added to my overall integrated sub-total as a human are rooted in the intersections I have had with other humans.
While some have been more pleasant than others, I can’t classify specific experiences as good or bad. If I truly believe they have all added in some way, to my perspectives and broadened my scope of appreciating the beauty of diversity, then “it is ALL good.”
This paradigm shift comes at a price. In order for me to embrace and integrate each experience as fully as the last, I’ve had to do a lot of practicing of letting go of the aspect of human nature that makes me want to avoid anything unpleasant or uncomfortabley difficult.
Even when the nature of the experience doesn’t change, my ability to navigate through it with optimism and a desire to learn something new about someone else or myself, increases and becomes a new integrated part of my journey of becoming.
INTEGRATED 1 and 2 are created from rigid recycled paper pulp packing forms, coated with a concrete, plaster mix.
The rigidity of the forms suggests the pre-conceived, perceptions of events or associations that we compartmentalize and catalog as having been negative or positive.
The free flow nature of the coating is reflective of our agency to choose how we will “coat” that experience and the beauty that can be achieved as all aspects of the catalog are integrated into us as expanded, human beings.
The patterns of our lives that will emerge, in this process are infinitely unique to us, as is represented in the pattern variations of INTEGRATED 1 And 2.
Enjoy!