YOU ARE STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Have you ever seen a construction site? It’s not pretty; there is dirt, debris, nails and tools everywhere. It might be your own house under construction but you cannot LIVE there yet. The construction is not complete.

A caterpillar is a butterfly under construction. People may have looked down on that poor little crawling worm. People may have written you off as a worthless, useless worm that won’t amount to much in life. Little do people know that the greatest transformation starts inside where no one can see. When God is done with him; that crawling worm will fly in the sky with beautiful wings for the world to admire. Transformation is change on the inside. Don’t underestimate the importance of small changes in your life. Don’t despise small victories in your life. One day all of the change inside will be manifested outside.

Transformation is God revealing to the world what he was doing under the covers. All the changes, all the lessons, all the failures, all the pain, all the joys, all the ups and all the downs will one day be weaved into a beautiful tapestry of butterfly wings that will amaze this world.

So be patient as God is weaving a beautiful wing for you. Ignore the naysayers and the world that despises and rejects you. Don’t try to win their approval as the best worm in town. Focus on the change inside.

Butterflies, Babies, Diamonds, Gold and Peals have one thing in common – they were all formed and shaped in secret, away from the human eyes. So focus on the change inside and wait for the completed work of transformation inside.

The most important part of any building is its foundation that is underground. If a foundation is cracked the building is condemned. The most important part of a man is the character inside not the exterior. If the character is flawed all the decorations outside is meaningless.

A building is only as strong as its foundation. We are all builders. We build relationships that endure with encouragement and understanding or walls of criticism and negativity that divides. We build organizations with a firm foundation of integrity that will endure the test; or companies based on schemes that crumble when times of testing come.

For a leader to build an organization they must check their own foundation first and ensure their self-leadership is rock solid. Then can they truly build something that last and becomes their legacy.

“Successful leaders are continuously and consistently BUILDING a solid foundation of integrity and intentional growth for both themselves and their team.” – Benjamin S H Goh.

IT IS MORNING YET ON CREATION DAY: ART THE BEST POSSESSION.

Notwithstanding the volume of literature on the creative process, the act of bringing into existence a work of art, there is no consensus and not likely to be one on the matter. Even the human medium for eventuate of artistic forms, the artist, cannot pontificate on the exact nature of his activity or vocation.  He remains essentially an enigma to himself.

One thing is certain, though; namely, that whatever forces or efforts underpin the manifestation of communicable artistic form, whatever the nature of the various inputs into a picture, a poem, a piece of sculpture or music, be they physical, psychological, communal, spiritual or otherwise, the process is complex and still evolving.

Detective criticism sets itself the problem of tracking down the various ‘influences’ that contribute to the form and character of a given work of art or the oeuvre of an artist. Is the goal of this type of criticism attainable? Can the human mind unravel all the extra-formal aspects of a work of art?  Or are we limited to discovering a few levels of meaning?  Is art like a magical onion with limitless skins, a phenomenon that cannot be conquered by ex-foliation? Even if our critic confines himself to only the literary in the case of poetry, can he discover that obscure line or phrase in a daily newspaper that had caught the poet’s fancy, that memorable line spoken by the inebriate man at the pub which the writer immediately appropriated, that philosophical insight into the nature of death which the weather-beaten old man at a funeral had adumbrated?

The critic has literately to undergo each and every minute bit of experience which the writer had been through, including reading every word he had read. Unless on that artist’s attestation, how does a researcher discern the etiology of those motifs that have different significations in different communities or to several artists?

The point I have been discussing is that trying to unfathomed all that goes into a work of art is a herculean task. Nevertheless, insights into the processes or stages of say a painting can be quite revealing and salutary.

Quite often what confronts the spectator is the finished not the evolving work. Sometimes the so-called sketch or study is more exciting more spontaneous and human than the final thing for we have the privileged, as it were to look over the shoulder of the painter bent over his work, eavesdrop on the poet hammering out his lines, and watch them struggle with their medium and surmount several failures. The draft or sketch can also be likened to the tentative, initial, and sometimes accidental, gestures of the actor or dancer at a rehearsal.

 When you make your MARK in life, you will always attract ERASERS. To succeed in life you must overcome the many efforts of others to pull you down. How you choose to respond to criticism is one of the most important decisions that you make. The first and great commandment about critics is: Don’t let them scare you. “It is morning yet on creation day”.