The Art of excellence

The longer I find myself on this planet the more interested I am in the idea of art. When I was younger I could have been forgiven for thinking that artists are those people who squirrel away in studio splashing colour and plaster and abstract ideas around. Then I discovered the pure beauty of music and knew that to be one of the highest forms of art. Then any number of odd art prizes and strange concepts led me, reluctantly at times to include any number of bizarre, random and quite frankly tenuous definitions of art. No doubt we could spend hours discussing the merits of such inclusive and expanding definitions of art but I would rather take this time to draw our attention to the idea of the art of living. 

Overtime I have come to realise that there are moments in our everyday life where something artful can happen. What would otherwise be an ordinary moment can somehow take on a greater sense of something more valuable, something more substantial- something important. When using the word important I don’t necessarily mean something serious and weighty, afterall play is important whilst not being serious. What I am referring to when I talk about art is a form of everyday grace that can at times take something that is leaden and make it feel golden. You could be forgiven for thinking that football and ballet are very different but if you think about those magical moments in both of those environments, if you stop and remember or imagine the feeling of what makes a golden moment special in those arenas we may begin to be able to explore the idea of art in our everyday lives. What makes an audience find pleasure in watching athletes push themselves to the absolute limit? What makes us as a spectator lift up out of our seats, hold our breaths, eyes widen, heart fasten? What is it we see in that moment, what is it we feel? It is in that moment that we are seeing art in action, we are seeing something spontaneous and beautiful unfolding where something comes out of nothing, where someone leaps and seems to hang in the air for longer than possible allowing them to either head a ball into a net or to cross the stage in one bound.

Imagine for a moment that the two teams on a football pitch are like two sides of your mind. One is fighting for good, for growth, for freedom, for honour, the other is fighting for wrong, for destruction, distraction and doubt. The two sides battle it out and nothing works especially well, passes get intercepted, good efforts go to ground, things look like disaster is upon us at the worst moment. All is lost. Our best hopes seem dashed and then suddenly through some insight, some moment of inspiration someone takes the initiative and finds they have turned into space, they have found ground to move in , they look up and they see someone who has intuitively sensed where they could be, the ball as pure potential is floated over the defenders who are clamouring to bring it down, desperate to crush this uprising, the moment and all its potential seems to have a mind of itself that people are tapping into, the ball is perfectly controlled by a player in the perfect position, they feel no pressure, no force, they are in the zone – flowing with perfect composure, one defender bears down on them and with poise and grace they outwit them, the crowd knows how good it looks, the crowd knows what this might mean, the whole stadium breathes in. The player draws out the goalie and with ferocious force hammerers the ball into the back of the net in a way no human could stop. The match has been turned around, the moment changed, the potential is unleashed and the crowd leap to their feet making a group sound that is deafening. 

It would be easy to think that that is because the red team has beaten the blue team and indeed that is what has happened on the pitch but what is really going on is a celebration of those moments, those feelings when everything falls into place, where life works, when things flow, where there is artfulness. In those moments those sportsmen and women are not sports people they are artist athletes. If you were to speak to them about what happens in those moments they would describe that they simply weren’t there. Art is not about craft. Craftmanship is all about the skills, the muscle control, the fitness, the agility and the tactical ability to know what to do. The art is in the forgetting of all of that. The art is in the absence of the mind. There is no one there taking action. Action moves through us and when we witness that in someone else we cannot help but be moved by it on the sport field, on the stage, in the classroom, in the operating theatre, in the law courts, on the building site, on the customer service desk, in leadership, in parenting and indeed every area of life there is a place for art. For art is about getting really good at everything we do so that we no longer have to “do” anything. We are not human doings, we are human beings desperately in need of remembering what it is to make an art form out of our life, what it is to allow the very best of ourselves in every moment without force or pressure to simply flow through us, to allow us almost to be guided by some solid over-arching certainty. A golden flow that makes us more powerful, more graceful, where people will follow us and we have the ability to help people find the joy in discovering their own victory. Not victory over others but that victory over our doubt. That victory over those parts of our minds that doubt, that niggle, that chatter, that pull our potential down. If you look hard enough you can see art everywhere and you can know that when you are moved by the athlete or inspired by artists in other areas that it is the grace that captivates you, the freedom, the perfection of someone flowing with an unstoppable excellence. That is our power; that is our strength; that is our happiness. Let the art that surrounds us everywhere remind us of who we are when we are at our best.