My Canvas

My future is like a blank canvas before an artist. I can do anything, go anywhere. The world is my limit. 

So what stops me from abandoning all my obligations; my job, my family, my friends my religion? What stops me from running off into the setting sun? I could live as free as an eagle on a mountaintop. I could be a hermit in the forest or a hippie on the beach. I could make the city sidewalk my home. Why do I limit myself, beholden with such heavy obligations?

The truth is nothing is stopping me. I could, but I don’t. The reason is that on that canvas I sketch a picture of what I envision my future looking like. I draw all the things I think I should do, need to do, have to do, want to do, am supposed to do. They form a picture. It is layered with my values, needs, beliefs, memories, urges, feelings and dreams.

For example, my family on my canvas. I value my family, need the companionship, cherish the love, I feel a need to love, I want to be a good father, a loyal husband. I dream to maintain not just a house but a home.

To get to that end I sketch out how I think that has to look like. I then use that sketch as my map to my future.

What I can do though, is reexamine that drawing. Does it really have to look like that? Can I perhaps draw it differently? Does it need to be shaped just that way? Am I limited to what I believe it must look like? How can I reimagine it differently, perhaps in a new way that hasn’t yet occurred to me?

 Do I like this? Do I want it looking the way it does?

The future hasn’t happened yet, it is a blank canvas. I am the artist. I can draw as I wish.