Faithfulness because it’s how we connect and share our art with each other.

And faithfulness because it’s how we need to connect with ourselves.

There’s general faithfulness, like turning up and being kind, and there is specific faithfulness.

Faithfulness is all the ways you express and deliver your talents and resources.

When I’m reading Bob Harris’s The International Bank of Bob and his desire to use his nest-egg of $20,000 to invest in people through Kiva, I’m reading about his faithfulness with his resources and his talents as a writer.  In the last few days, someone I know has been discovering he loves doing this too – different ways – but he wants to help people meet their needs; he, too, is being faithful with his resources and his abilities (I know his Strengths).

Then there’s doubt.

When we’re not faithful in these kinds of way, it’s probably not because we’re bad people, but because we doubt what we have and who we are.  Humans are comparison-creatures – we’re always comparing the things around us, usually things which are most easily comparable, so similar.  This creates a problem.  You can’t compare that thing you do (your art) with anyone else’s.  If you find yourself thinking, “I can’t do what that person is doing,” you’ve fallen into the comparison trap.  (Some teacher may have messed up your thinking by comparing your work with someone else’s – the teacher has fallen into the trap too – and who were they to compare you with someone else?)

The good news is Humans are capable of getting out of the trap.

We have imagination.

Our educations may have caused us to doubt and devalue imagination, but it is the means by which we overcome doubt and realise we don’t need to compare ourselves with anyone else.  With imagination we can break the bad habit of comparing like with like.  Why not have some fun –  what if that thing you do was a train, or a surgical instrument, or a sunset, what could you do?

The reason that thing you do can’t be be compared with something already existing is because it doesn’t exist.  It’s unique.

The world is waiting for you to produce your art, faithfully, day in, day out, with imagination, focus, and love.