LightBears

The LightBears blog was started approximately a year ago to enable its author, Asha Bear, to write what is intended to be an informative, fact-based (to the best of my ability!) blog to offer its readers different life perspectives and also — a HUGE GOAL — to help uplift its readers’ spirits and increase the level of HOPE in the world around us. In my opinion, we are surrounded by an overwhelming amount of distressing and disturbing information from too many sources, and not enough good, uplifting, hope-in-humanity sorts of information.

It is my perspective that one of the reasons that the news reports we generally receive are so difficult to bear is because it is the sensational, the attention grabbing, the knee jerk OMG reaction, news that draws people’s attention and, in an indirect way, earns money. The news station you are watching or listening to, the online news site that you are focusing on, in general is usually supported by advertisements from corporate sponsors. Please note, I am in no way criticizing or disparaging the media, because without it we would all be sadly misinformed.

What I am saying here that it is a rarer occurrence to hear about someone rescuing ducklings from the storm drain, or helping an animal in distress, or giving somebody a haircut and a fresh suit of clothes, or helping to support a family in need of food, than it is to hear about a bombing, an earthquake, a shooting, etc.

All of the aforementioned things happen. The good things happen, the bad and terrible things happen, and we endure. Let’s face it, a certain surge of adrenaline goes through you when you hear about something bad happening to somebody else, a certain horror overtakes you when you realize that the bad thing that happened is in your own area, perhaps right next door, perhaps somebody you know personally. The power of emotion is immense. And the power of being informed is equally immense. It is essential, of course, to remain informed about what is happening around us all. Because unless we are informed, with accuracy (let me underscore the word ‘accuracy’) we cannot make an informed decision if one is called for. 

I emphasize the word ‘accuracy’ because it’s always important to fact check before jumping to conclusions. The reporter may have been in a hurry and mistyped a word in communicating the article to the agency that published it. A bystander may have given a biased viewpoint on what they saw. The person being quoted may in fact not be that well informed; sometimes, the person may be giving a deliberately misleading statement just to achieve a moment in the limelight. A friend of mine who not only was a journalist but also taught it at a university level has taught me the importance of always double-checking the facts and even triple checking them. If I do not do that, then I am being a poor communicator of information in this blog and indeed in my personal life.

Now, in my personal life, do I really triple check my facts? I should. Do I? Do I take the time, or jump to conclusions? Where do I turn for additional facts, how do I know that the source I am turning to is accurate and unbiased? These are all things that I have to take into consideration before I undertake to write this blog. And even then, the act of writing this blog is an act of presenting my personal viewpoint on something, not stating it as a cast-in-concrete or engraved-in-granite fact.

I hope this is something that people who read blogs in general think about, but my hunch is, being human, we generally don’t. 

I feel badly that so much of the bad things that happen in the world come to our attention so very easily, and with such fanfare, while the good things that happen are proportionally so much less frequently mentioned. There are so many more kind-hearted, genuinely caring, humanely motivated people around us, some of them doing heroic things, that are not publicized, or that get overlooked. This, to me, is what’s important — let’s face it, we all need a reason to get out of bed, dress, and go out to meet the public! How much easier is it if you have something happy to think about, as you walk out your door?!

I set out to write something fairly simple here and got myself sidetracked, please forgive me.

So: why am I writing this blog, when I do? It’s because I want to publicize the good stuff, I want people to think about ways that things can be made better, I want people to feel good about their neighbor, I want people to think about smiling at someone just to make their day a bit easier, instead of thinking about the sad stuff. It’s probable that the world is always going to have sad stuff to think about. But is it good for our health, and is it good for our community, if we walk around feeling sad and down all the time? Is that down feeling, that despondency, going to create any change, is it going to affect the reality of whatever it is that has happened around us? 

I am personally a strong believer that our attitude, how we present ourselves, how we interact with other people around us, has a huge impact on the world at large. It’s a ripple effect. I’m an optimist, with a dash of reality as well as a morsel of cynicism thrown in. But it’s easier for me to choose optimism, because it weighs so much less than the heaviness of sorrow. I really truly believe that if you throw a pebble into a pond in order to make a pretty pattern in the water (rather than in order to hit a seagull, lol), you are going to create ripples. And I believe that the ripples from that pebble can go far. Sometimes farther than you would ever imagine.

I am a firm believer that positive intent, the act of believing in love as a primary motivator, the act of trust that I as an individual can create positive change around me, is what makes life worth living. So, I write this blog with the positive intent of adding love and hope to the world around me. I hope it has that impact on those who are reading this blog! 

Another reason I’m writing this particular blog is to give you a glimpse into who Asha Bear is. I’m an older woman, of undetermined ethnicity, political or religious affiliation, in the northeastern area of the US, and I identify as a spiritually active creator/artist. My ability to create art is a fairly recent gift from Above, a gift from the Universe, and it is also a gift that I have given myself. I decided — too many years ago to count — that I could not draw or paint because, when I compared what I did with that of my parent or other kids or what I saw in books, I always found my own stuff lacking. It wasn’t good enough. Didn’t show the right things, the colors were wrong, the shape should have been different, etc etc etc. I did not believe in myself and it showed in my life.

Well, I am older now, life has changed a bit, and I have made the decision to believe in myself. To act with courage. And to be kind to myself. 

The kindness that I decided to show myself was to let my inner child, an overused term I know, go and metaphorically speaking make mud pies. I decided that I would deliberately flout any and all rules that I knew or had ever run into about what art should be or is supposed to be or is. I deliberately ignore the color chart, I’m going to find out on my own what colors I personally like together, I deliberately choose materials to work on that are not your traditional canvas, and I don’t necessarily even use paint.

In fact just as an example of how far I go, I recently had the fortune to attend a very laid-back artistic event where the intention was for people to do their own thing in their own way after listening to a piece of music. And there would not be any sharing at the end of the class of what we had created, nor were we seated so that we could see each other’s work! This was a blow for freedom for me. There were three things in addition to a piece of paper in front of me on the table: two cups holding crayons and chalk, and a piece of wrapped chocolate. I immediately let my 4-year-old out and started trying to draw with the chocolate. I had better success with the chalk and with the pastels to be truthful, but it felt so good, it felt so rebellious, I had a blast.

And that, my friends, was the beginning of my focus on art. I’m not looking to be famous, to get into shows, or galleries, or newspapers, or anything. I’m just doing it for my own private enjoyment. And if I show it now and then on public media, well, that’s my choice to expose my personal idea of what beauty is to the friends whom I have on media. And if they want to poke fun at it, or say gee they could do better, that’s fine. Because it’s not about anybody except me. And, like this blog, I put it out there just because I’m curious about what people think, and because I hope to inspire other people.

About art, and this blog, and maybe life in general: I figured out that the only thing you can do wrong in art or any other endeavor is to walk away from what you’re working on because you think it’s a failure. Set it aside, come back to it later, anything is possible. If I don’t like something I create, I can paint over it, color over it, scratch it out, cut it out, add something on top of it, etc.

So I have talked long enough. I hope that I have shared with you just a little bit about myself to humanize me in your eyes and to remove me from what may have inadvertently become a pedestal because, gasp, “I’m a writer!”

I am no more a writer than the next person who picks up a pen, or publishes a thought on public media, or publishes a blog. I’m just an ordinary person with different ideas, and I’m having fun and I hope you’re having fun too!

My big question to you, my reader, is if you’re not having fun, what is stopping you?

And with that thought I will say farewell for now and encourage you to continue to be a LightBear. What is a LightBear you may ask? Well… If you have a creative mind, what image pops up? That’s what a LightBear is. So go be one and have fun! And don’t run with scissors. Lol!