Life is many things, including uncomfortable. Yesterday, I heard that a friend’s mentor told them, “Adversity does not build character; it reveals it.” Every day, we have the opportunity to show up, start again, and do better. This is the Buddhist concept of a beginner’s mind. The practice is to remain unattached to everything we thought we knew and begin each day without preconception. In this open, fresh-minded approach, adversity feels reduced and manageable.
Kiki Smith has examined and rendered the female body in whole and in part, focusing on function and effort through isolation. We only utilize a fraction of the capacity of our brain—what could we do with access to the additional percentage? I imagine it includes intuition, perception, and other yet unnamed, unknown concepts. Perhaps through our current adversity, more of it will be revealed. What can we find by being unattached to the results of our efforts?
