Life in Color

Looking back at high school is almost scary for me. Not ‘scary’ in the sense of remembering bad or embarrassing moments of high school, but ‘scary’ in the sense of remembering what my “plan” was for my future and realizing how much it has changed in these past few months. I thought that I knew exactly what I was going to do and who I was going to become from a young age all the way up until senior year in high school. The plan I have had ever since I was in elementary school was that I was going to graduate high school with high honors, have a perfect and amazing last summer, go to college for interior designing, become employed, get married, travel the world and have a family. Well, I obviously graduated high school, but not even with regular honors and my summer was fun, but definitely not perfect. When I moved to the city back in August, I saw a wide range of opportunities. These opportunities consisted of making new friends, meeting professors that are now contacts, being involved and doing projects in my field, and being exposed to the real world with the (sometimes) dangerous combination of no more rules from parents and being able to do almost everything, anywhere and at any time. I can slowly see myself changing in ways where my wants and needs are completely different than what they used to be, and that my interests and talents are expanding into other fields of art that I never pictured would happen. So when I look at my future now as a brand new college student, questions like, “Will you be doing what you have always thought you’d be doing?” or “Will you believe in the same things down the road?” used to be a stubborn “yes” or “no” answer, but now I find myself second guessing those answers and discovering that my “plan” is really to make a good impact on peoples’ lives and living one day at a time to see where life will take me no matter how unusual it may be.

For my third and final study project, I decided to take a different approach and use sumi ink as the medium to paint an abstract picture of an eye. I have this strange interest in eyes. I think that there is a rhetorical concept of the symbolism behind what the eye is seeing. It can be something that it physically sees or is thinking about, as well as the reflection that is in the eye, which looks like a window and makes me think of “windows of opportunities.” It can also portray the truth about somebody whether it is emotions, passions, goals or dreams. The one reason why I chose to go about this study in the way that I did is because of the transition from high school to real world. No, not college. I say ‘real world’ not only because Columbia is a career school where it feels like I am going to work everyday, but because of the windows of opportunities that are in front of me and having the city of Chicago as a college campus where I am actually living in the real world opposed to a state school campus.

One thing that I love about painting and creating art in general is that it allows me time to really think. While I was painting this, I thought about all of the obstacles that I am going to have to face in the future. Money, being one thing that I will have to be responsible and wise about as well as finding employment during and after college. I also see a lot of new people in my future as I continue on meeting a ton of new faces. One thing that I strongly believe in is that there is a reason why you cross paths with the people who you meet because they can teach you something that will either help you or hurt you so you learn from it. Staying in Chicago is a definite plan, because the architecture, art, music, culture, deep dish pizza, museums, sports teams, history, neighborhoods and so on made me fall in love with this town and now that I live here, it’s hard to imagine leaving.

During the middle of this project, a friend of mine who is a writer showed me a video, and I cannot stress enough how impeccable the timing was, almost like it was a message to tell me to take the advice given in this video. It is titled, “What if money didn’t matter,” which is narrated by Alan Watts who talks to the age group of college graduates who are still trying to figure out what they want to do for the rest of their lives. He asks the question, “What would you do if money were no object?” After watching this video a few more times to comprehend everything that he says, I started to think about the decisions I have been making in order to make a living. This video has really made me think about my motives. Would I rather do something that I wasn’t passionate about and make a living? Or would I rather live day by day and be the happiest person in the world? Well, I’ve already answered that question. Like Alan Watts says, I would rather live a short life doing things that I love rather than a long one and be miserable.

All of the time that I had to think about these questions about the ‘Future Taylor’ answered a few of them, such as the “one day at a time” lifestyle that I want to live by, but rather raised another question that I think everyone tries to answer… When the end of my time is approaching, will I look back on everything and be happy with what I have done? Or regret it, thinking that everything was a waste when I go. If the afterlife recaps this life repeatedly, I want to make it worth living over and over again. Like I said before, I have no idea where I am going to end up or what I will be doing after I graduate, but I know that being here in Chicago is the starting line to my future.