I am very grateful to have really smart folks in my life. I was talking with a dear friend of mine, Jacqueline Sullivan (check out her artwork folks, if you are ever looking to learn something about acrylics and such, she is a master.....). Now Jacqueline is one of those people you can truly talk to all day and merely scratch the surface. In my experience, you can always tell how much a person has a passion for teaching and their students by their willingness to share what they know (Jacqueline is one of these type folks). It is just something in their DNA. I have seen a number of people pop up in the industry who have forgotten that teaching in front of a classroom isn't about them or even what's in their head, but about the folks sitting in the chairs in front of them who paid to be there in the first place. At any rate, the discussion du jour ended with Jacqueline saying something so profound....."Sarah, they need to make their own ladders, not climb on the heads of others...."
We climb all sorts of ladders in our lives, the "corporate ladder", the "ladder of success", the "ladder to the sky".....have we ever given it thought to who or whom put the rungs there in the first place? Who built the ladder you are climbing right now, who's head did you crush to get to where you are and, the better question is, are they going to be forgiving when a rung breaks and you go back down and have to revisit them? I suppose climbing a ladder you had to build yourself may mean it takes you a bit longer to get to the top but, you'd know that the workmanship was solid and that you did not have to rely on or hurt someone else in the process. I am always fascinated by the fact that folks tend to believe that there is just one ladder too. In warfare, if you wanted to get over the castle walls, there were many ladders there simultaneously, side by side, all working towards that common goal.....I am not saying that the goal they had was a good one just, that there were many ladders.....
In art, I see lots of folks competing against each other, trying to get a leg up. Climbing the ladder is not inherently bad, it is the way you do it that tends to be a problem. If you build your own ladder and set it next to someone else's, you can have the benefit of having someone beside you to spur you on, you are accountable for your own work and your successes and failures belong to you- no fingers or heads to crush or bruise. I remember seeing these giant metal paper airplanes in the airport. I thought how fitting. Someone on some ladder had to climb up and hang these things....and how grateful I was that they did because it was just so cool to see them "fly". Ladders help us climb to the next level in realizing our dreams. There will always be someone higher and some folks lower than we ourselves are at. We want to "soar" like the metal planes, not cause folks injuries that make them "sore".
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