Where are we now?

What ever happened to the renaissance? It was an era where artistic talent was praised and held high for all to see. Where people were free to express themselves without the strange sense of anxiety that seems to be more prominent in today’s culture. Anxiety of what others will think. Anxiety of what society might think.

Look at where we are now. We live in a world where the office is our new home. Where we are almost destined to spend life in a cubicle, filling out forms and typing away on computers, much like I am now. I don’t like the way things are heading. Where is our artistic talent now? How many modern artists can you name offhand? How many award winning authors can you think of that are writing today? My guess is you won’t come up with one off the top of your head. How many of you have dreamed of becoming one yourself? We need more encouragement. More inspiration.

It’s an ironic situation that we’re in these days and by we I mean those who are still in school, like myself. We are raised in an institution that makes the office a feared place. If you are in trouble, you are sent to the office to be punished and yet, what does school focus on? It teaches us the skills we might need to get by in an office. It teaches us the skills we might need to be a mathematician, or a scientist or a journalist. True enough that there are creative elements to all of these jobs but they don’t offer anything in the way of the encouragement of creativity. English is the closest you will come to creativity within the core subjects, that is, those subjects that are deemed necessary by whichever committee it is that decides such things. That brings me to the options.

Options of course, are optional courses that might dabble in the elements of creativity that are shunned within the core subjects. Who knows what your school might offer? You might be lucky enough to have a drama program or a band program or what have you. Maybe an art class. What I’m getting at, is that not every school is able to provide all of these programs to its students and because they aren’t deemed as necessary, they are considered expendable. Self-expression is considered expendable.

One thing for sure is that there is so much undiscovered talent that might not be getting the chance to express itself and that is what this is all about. People need more of a chance to be heard and to be seen for what they really are, not what people want them to be.

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