Impermanence.

Something that I don’t understand about the tendencies of humans in our culture is the need that people feel to hold on to everything. It seems that the majority of people derive their sense of accomplishment from a tangible item that they can display for others to see. Having said this, I am no different. While the majority of people choose to display their success with things that they purchase, I find that my strong tie to physical items is my artwork. I find that after I have invested myself in a piece that I can not let it go because I feel that the time will be a loss when in reality this is not the case. The sense of accomplishment should be derived from knowing that you accomplished the job successfully and that if you did it once, that you are fully capable of doing it again. I have heard that many teachers will create an assignment for students to complete that they then destroy in order to teach them a lesson on this very matter, but I’d never encountered such a teacher until first semester of this year. The assignment was in my drawing and composition class and we were supposed to draw an iconic celebrity on a piece of Mylar paper. The members of the class chose very good subjects such as Betty White, Obama, Hugh Laurie and my choice, James Dean. After my classmates and I had spent a minimum of a week’s amount of work on the drawings our teacher told us to take block erasers and slash the papers. So, a very frustrated and upset class spent the next five minutes erasing into their works of art. Though at the time I was HUGELY aggravated, the lesson most definitely taught me something. It taught me to learn to hold items less preciously. It made me realize that there are certain cultures and religions that stress the concept of impermanence as one of their principle values. If you've taken a world religions class then you know that in Buddhism, the monks construct elaborate sand mandalas only to destroy them upon completion so that they may practice their patience and concentration while meditating. Chalk street artists also have to be able to deal with the concept that their creations will be completly washed away at the next rain. Perhaps the people of our society could benefit from the lessions that these practices have to teach us. Any thoughts?