How many times have you heard this said to someone; perhaps even to you?

It’s a myth, of course.

There are things I can do and there are things I cannot.  I can accept this or face bitter disappointment.  Behind this reality, there are many reasons and choices I’ve made along the path of my life, leading to certain things being open to me and others being closed.

These are the boundaries and spaces and restrictions which inform and form my life and my art.

Now we get to value the true capacity of our lives, including our capacity to grow and develop, both ourselves as works of art, and producing the things we want to infuse with goodness for others.

Erwin McManus has been reminding me of things I first heard him share almost ten years ago: the artist has three primary colours to create from; the musician has twelve notes; and, the architect has squares, circles, and triangles.  Each set of resources seems so limited when you account for them in these ways, and yet we are overwhelmed by the way accepting these limitations allows for incredible imagination and creativity.

These lines, limitations, and rules become helpful because every day they provide us with a place to begin (the kinds of “limitations” available to artists, musicians, and architects, are also found in other expressions of Human creativity).

Only be honest about who you are and what you have and begin to craft something only you can imagine and produce, whether it be in art or creating a cafe or working with words or cleaning spaces or providing customer service or offering counselling or providing terminal care or defining creative office environments.

You may not be able to do anything you want – hopefully that myth is busted – but you can become more who you are and do more of that thing you do.