Waiting for Godot

It is snowing again here in the Midwest. It looks to be a cold snowy winter this year. I'm thankful that my mother bought me a Honda Accord about a year and a half ago. Someone was selling a 1994 for a very low price and mother got it for me. My 1978 Toyota was on its last legs and this new car runs and handles like a dream especially in bad weather.

Christmas is coming sooner than most of us are ready for it to be here. It reminds me of the play "Waiting for Godot." This is the time of year that little children are the most anxious for time to fly as they can hardly wait for Christmas Day. They will never have the patience that the characters in Beckett's play have waiting for Godot to show up.

I have learned to be more patient over the years although I still find myself muttering "God grant me patience and I want it now." I think being an artist is what taught me patience. Artwork does not come out full blown even if you are using a computer. Art comes at its own pace and if you rush it then it does not come out right. I will find that I have spent literally hours on a picture fine tuning and trying to get everything exactly the way I want it to look. Some pictures take weeks before I am finally satisfied with what I see. It takes an enourmous amount of patience to tell a computer to reproduce the pictures that I see in my mind's eye. There are times that I stare at a picture and try to figure out what that picture needs because I can tell something is missing. Sometimes it is only a tiny change that is needed a shadow or light that needs to be added. I work on the pictures until what I see in my head is on the computer screen.

Life is like that also. You can't rush things to come at the pace you may want them to come. When you take short cuts you can make things worse. My Mom always says that if you do something then do it right. You need to take the time to do it properly. If you rush into something, especially a relationship, then it often fails. I found this out in my marriage. If I had taken the time to really get to know that person I never would have married him.

I try to learn life's lesson that you can climb any mountain if you take it one step at a time which is the theme of this picture. To be human, however, is to make mistakes. There is no guarantee in my life that I won't rush into another relationship or situation in life where patience would be advisable. I am human after all and that does entail that I will lead with my heart and not my head sometimes. Oh and by the way Lord did I mention I need patience now?