Niche

Niche
1. A recess in a wall, as for holding a statue or urn.
2. A cranny, hollow, or crevice, as in rock.
3. A situation or activity specially suited to a person's interests, abilities, or nature

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In the past week I've exchanged emails with a few people jousting with the self-lashing demons. Which is probably what prompted the thoughts in the previous post. The other common thread among those emails was the desire to find their artistic niche. My first response was don't be too quick to fit into a niche that could develop into invisible walls that potentially cut you off from growth. The ones were you focus on defining yourself too early and thus cut off any possibilities of exploration.

Perhaps my response came from watching and listening to people throughout the years. I've seen people identify themselves with a title and then refuse to make changes for fear of losing themselves. I've seen people start a sketch and when it doesn't turn out to be the envisioned masterpiece, quickly announce they're not an artist and never allow themselves to create again. What if that person was instead a great sculptor, or weaver, or writer, or all the above.

We do this. Society seems to have a need to file everything away into orderly categories like sorting mail into cubbyholes; rich, poor, talented, geek, creative, blue collar, white collar, and so on and so on. When in reality, we are multi-faceted beings.

As a project manager one of my biggest pet peeves was that I felt I didn't know ALOT about one specific thing but instead knew varying degrees about many things. I perceived this as a weakness. It's not until recently that I realized my perceived weakness was my strongest point. If I didn't know the answer, I knew where to get it. Instead of my career being a little isolated box it was more of a climbing wall with niches and jutting rocks.

Which made me think (yep, here we go again). Perhaps finding your niche isn't a bad thing so long as you don't erect walls around said niche. So long as the niche is used as a means for advancing to the next step in the quest for further exploration. A niche as a resting spot on the journey that can last as little as a few hours or years.

For me, just starting on my spiritual and artistic journey, it would be foolish to settle into a niche. I need to explore otherwise I run the risk of erecting those invisible walls. I'd like to think of my niches like those on that climbing wall acting as strongholds that enable me to move around as I explore the vast terrain of my life.

Perhaps it's just my thinking. Perhaps it's why I'll always be a wanderer, an explorer, a restless soul.

Perhaps....

“Most people are not really free.

They are confined by the niche in the world

 that they carve out for themselves.

They limit themselves to fewer possibilities

by the narrowness of their vision.”

V.S. Naipaul