The war of art . The struggle to find our voice. Who are we? Who do others perceive us to be? Do those realities ever intersect? I doubt it. Only for a few of us. A beautiful girl walks by. Is that who she is? A fighter in the ring. Is that who they are? Why is it easier to believe the fighters choice? Does the beautiful girl not make the choice to be beautiful with diet and exercise? Clothing and makeup? But why do we believe some things and not others? Can the fighter not be so much more? A creator. An artist. An inventor. Is the beautiful girl more frustrated than the fighter? The struggle is real. How do we define ourselves? Brains? Intellect? The things we do? The help we give to others? Or how we feel at night as we lay in bed just before we allow ourselves to relax and doze off? What is doing the right thing if not being true to that self? Some days it seems like work they say. Why? Must we work on ourselves? Is just “being” not enough? NO!- No it is not. We sometimes think we know better than what that little voice is telling us. How does that work? Has our one hit song come and gone or do we have an endless supple of energy and our own internal art? I don’t know? Who does know? Adults? Kids? Elderly? The kids of course but what do they know about war or art? Or anything? How can they have the answers with no training? Such a conundrum. And weren’t we kids with all of the answers at some point? What happened there? And the cycle begins again. The struggle for who we are rages on. The answers are right in front of us but why can’t we see them? Or are we afraid to look? We can’t see the forest for the trees as mom would say. Isn’t the struggle funny? It’s so cliché. But then again so are we. We are not really that deep or mysterious. But we fight on just the same to save face. From who and why though? And to what end? But war never really ends. We just have periods of certain control until the next regime comes in to challenge our safety. Our control on our life. On ourselves. Such a strange yet familiar thing the struggle is. It’s like a friend that we wait for at the end of the night. We know he’s coming just when and from what dark corner. And even with this information we wait. Wait on our new identity. Our new position. Our new boundaries. The war of art. The battle rages on!