The Texture of Our Wings

People are like paintings, but in life, each person only gets one canvas to design. You can’t just begin the picture of your life all over again if you don’t like the image you ended up with. Sure, many try to paint over what is there already, but I’ve found it’s never that simple. Each layer of your painting impacts what is above it, and you can never erase a brushstroke, let alone a layer of paint. Even when there are so many layers overtop that you can no longer see what was once there, its foundational layer plays a role. And with each layer, a new texture of your life is created. 

Sometimes these textures are beautiful, and we can use more materials to enhance them, creating a stunning focal point called our life. Other times these textured patterns are undesirable, and often we try to hide them. Sometimes we “succeed” as some parts of a painting can be easily hidden, but not erased by more materials. But it’s often the deep groves that scraped our souls that can never be erased, no matter how hard we wish they could. We usually try to patch and fill them with other materials, yet they never seem to disappear. In fact, when we try to remedy them, we often turn these crevices into craters. 

It’s only when you begin to accept those cracks and use the additional materials to build bridges that you can move beyond those craters. The more time you spend trying to fill your holes, the less time you spend moving forward. Life is about building on what you have, not smoothing out the already formed wrinkles. If you keep looking back, you will never realize you could have grown wings, nor that you could soar over mountains.