I’ve been thinking a lot recently, about how hard it is to veer away from what you know.
The daughter of some of my best friends turned 18 last month, and I wrote her a letter of life advice. She wants to become a professional musician, or at least work in the music industry, and her dad is a professional comedian, while her mum works in the arts sector at an opera venue.
I don’t think there’s going to be any kind of nepotism there. Her parents aren’t able to give her a leg up, but still I think she’s at an advantage.
My mum wanted to be an artist all her life. Her dad was an office clerk, and her mum was a housewife (and so much more, but that’s society for you). Her dad drew, and painted, and guided her skills, but as a profession, she didn’t have a clue where to start, and so she became a teacher, right up until her late 40s when she started an art degree, and then floundered. How do you become a professional artist? Where do you go? How do you find customers?
My husband and I both write. We talk about writing and we have had work published in various ways. Last night my son was lying in bed worrying because I’d told him he couldn’t sit at the side of his PE class and draw comics, even though his teacher had said he could. He was worrying because he doesn’t like football. He doesn’t understand it, every time he plays he gets hit in the head, and the other kids tell him he’s doing it wrong. So I told him we can find out this stuff, we can practice this stuff, but he shouldn’t opt out, just because he’s bad at it.
He told me it’s not fair that boys are expected to like and play football, that all the boys in films and books and TV shows play football, and I agree. I said I don’t care if he plays football. He doesn’t have to be those boys, or any kind of boy, but don’t shut anything off right now, not yet. Give all of it a chance. Find a way to move and enjoy yourself. Don’t opt out of PE.
This morning his head teacher came up to me outside the school gates to tell me about an amazing poem he had written, she raved about his use of language, and I thought, of course he can use language, he’s in a house full of language.
And my friend’s daughter is in a house full of the arts industry. And my mum was in a house where being a professional artist felt like an impossibility, a dream.
We light up paths for our children. It’s our job to light up as many of them as we can. We can’t hold their hands as they walk them, but we can make them less intimidating.
Playing football for my son is a dark and scary path, and it’s my job to light it up as best I can, so he can choose whether to take it. There will be paths I can’t light up, but that’s life, maybe we can light them up together with a little effort.
This year has felt like a really slow start for me, sometimes it’s felt like a failure, but I am beginning to realise this.
My path is not illuminated. My life is not filled with freelancing creatives showing me how to do what I’m trying to do. I am walking a dark and scary path, and when you do that, it’s completely understandable to take slow, carefully thought out steps, to let your eyes adjust, to feel your way. It’s not a bad thing.
This year has been slow, and I haven’t achieved as much as I like, but the steps I’ve taken have been forward, and I carry my light with me, to show up a little more of the way, and I can keep going.
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