Had a nice an long exploration of the La Valise Noire concept yesterday with friend and psychologist Gerald.
Main reflections from there:
At work people expect me to meet the expectations; being reliable, following guidelines, creating stability and always be reasonable. In general in such an environment we have to be aware that - when pushing this desire of control too far - we end up with people that get rewarded and promoted for showing that behaviour. And basically people staying away from the tough choices, from solving the underlying problems (that are below the actual symptoms being treated), away from challenging what is not right. We stay away from conflict, but as such we hide it and we start re-reflecting and re-digest many times which increases the intensity and the size of the pressure; it seems this is often resulting in people being stresssed or burnt out.
I observe that as an artist I explore my dark sides, and people almost expect me to be excentric, unique, different, trying new things...In a way it seems I allow my artist-self more to make mistakes as it is part of being an artist, where I would not naturally allow my business-self to take the same approach.
In the end we will have ups and downs, and we have to accept that. We can not control all ups and downs, we should nonly aim not to have too many extremes, and guide ourselves in the direction we want (without the illusion of control).
Therefore:
I am an artist, so...I have the right to f*ck things up (which gave me the ide for this drawing)
And maybe everyone should be an artist then...? :)
Another articile with a cartoon on La Valise Noire?
As I had to re-post this article I lost the comment of Tina, wher she suggested to mke this drawing into a bumper sticker, sorry.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, like that idea, thanks.
Will post more cartoons the coming time and might create stickers for the most popular ones :) Thanks again