Fer teh TAT

    My sister says canvas is very forgiving. I say, it may forgive, but it never forgets. Think about it. 

You make a mistake. You use lots and lots of paint to cover it up, and, you could say it "forgives" your mistake. 

But, if you take a sharp knife and chip at the paint, you'll find it comes off with very little effort. And there, under the forgiving paint, is that one little spot that you didn't like and had to cover up. Maybe it was outside 

what you had drawn. Maybe the color you used didn't match the rest of the picture. Maybe you decided that particular piece didn't need to be in the picture to define the subject matter.

    I say, maybe our lives are canvases. Maybe we paint our picture as we travel down this highway we call life. And each day, each step, each decision, is a brush stroke on our canvas. And the plans and goals we make are the lines, like in a coloring book. And one day, you realize that you have been painting outside the lines. You say "Man, I can't believe I did that! I'm gonna hafta fix this mistake!" When, in reality, the people who are looking at your canvas are saying, "Wow, I never would have thought to paint OUTSIDE the lines!", or "Man, that is one beautiful painting!" And then, you start to color over the top of that "mistake". And the people are like, "Wait! What are you doing? That was pretty! Let me tell you what I thought of it.", or "Hey, wait, let me show you. You don't have to cover it up. You can make something even better out of this 'mistake' that you thought was un-fixable.". Then they start to chip away at the paint you've tried so hard to cover that mistake with. And in the end, you have a glorious painting of your travels on life's highway. And all because someone chipped at your paint.

    But then, what if no one ever came along and started to chip at that paint that you tried so hard to cover up that "mistake" with? Would you ever look at your canvas and say, "I wonder if that spot that I thought looked bad was really the one place the canvas looked REAL?" Sometimes, I think we need those sharp knives that seem to hurt so badly at times. 

    We need those people who know that mistakes make us who we are. Those people who see past the layers of paint we've used to try and cover our little idiosyncrasies, our differences, our "mistakes". The people who see the real person inside this facade of paint and lies and secrets. And they don't seem to mind that there is that one spot inside us that doesn't match, or is outside the lines we have drawn for ourselves. They love us for who we are. 

So, yes, I would say that the canvas of our lives is forgiving, but it doesn't forget... and I don't think it needs to.