Everyday Wallpapers

The other day my mom walked up to me to say something. I was lying on the couch and my computer was in the process of turning on while slightly tilted in the direction that she came. In the middle of her sentence she stopped herself to express amazement at my computer lock screen’s wallpaper.

Now this lock screen has been the same image for years, a kind of textured ice-cave with a shiny, blue tornado-like column just before the entrance. I fell in love with it when I first saw it, but for the majority of this last year or so, I’ve been bored with it, thinking of changing it (but not concerned enough to try yet). I was bored with it when she expressed amazement too, “Oh, that? Yeah… I’ve been meaning to change it.” I expected her to move quickly back to the original conversation.

But she leaned a bit closer to examine the background, pointing out certain neat things and wondering about others. I went back to the first few months when I got it and speculated to her what I thought it was a picture of, starting to remember other reasons why I loved it in the first place. Things I had apparently gotten used to or just forgotten.

Eventually we moved back to the original conversation, but this encounter reminded me of something I read once about writing. It said something like, “Of course you’re not excited by your book all the time. You’ve been staring at it again and again day after day. But to your readers, this is the first time they’ll see it. They’ll have the same excitement you had when you first conceived the idea.”

Just like me, my mom, and my computer screen, art can get boring to its creator. Sometimes, the spark vanishes and we think our work is bland and unoriginal. This goes for writing, painting, any creating! The curse (and blessing) of the artist is always seeing and looking for the faults in our work. But our audience sees every hard night, every rewrite, every “not right” as one sudden masterpiece. What we’ve stared at for ages and started thinking about tossing, they’re experiencing for the first time and it might be just what they needed in that moment—maybe even life-changing.

Now, I’m not saying that my computer lock screen has changed my mom’s life. But I remember in the beginning it inspired me and gave me a little added strength during some rough days. I wonder if the original artist/photographer had any doubts about it when it was being developed.

A final point I want to make with this post is… Sometimes we view ourselves as personal works of art. You stare at your face in the mirror every day since the day you first saw one, sometimes judging yourself, and eventually you hear a voice saying you’re ugly, boring, unattractive. Women and men try to fix this with makeup, hair changes, practicing new expressions, but these will eventually get boring too if you stare at them long enough, wondering if they’re good enough.

You are good enough.

As you are, you are beautiful and unique. Everyone else, especially strangers, will see you this way. You are the Northern Lights. You are the Grand Canyon.

In the Studio Ghibli movie, Howl’s Moving Castle, Sophie remarks how beautiful the ocean is and Michael (Markel in the movie?) responds with an offhanded, “It always looks like that.”

You are the ocean and may every wave and ripple bring you peace and love.