Remember the words freedom and responsibility, both needed to create your own balanced personal physical, mental and even spiritual “world,” or call it your own “personal garden,” as I like to call it. We all have this “personal garden.” I have one, you have one, they have one.
I will never forget the Sunday when the grocery store closed at 5:00 pm and took these employees, who volunteered, in the alley with a globe and a camera to take these pictures that I used for this painting.
They all joked and laughed and thought I had lost it. It was all so strange and funny then. But for me it was crystal clear in my mind what I was doing, today we have a very symbolic painting that will help millions realize how easy it can be for all of us at home, work, school and around the world to live, work, and worship in peace, agape (love), and understanding.
This painting is about the necessity for balance and understanding in recognizing and accepting differences among personalities, life styles, beliefs, convictions and cultures.
In the first tray we see a young person, Jim is his name, “his world” he told me includes love for his cat, the study of art and computer graphics, and a liking for hamburgers and a Greek book on metaphysics. Jim has developed his own belief system and world view and life based on freedom and responsibility.
Whether he is “right” or “wrong” depends on how his system compares with others, and if it is based on scientific reality. Jim’s “personal garden” the way he “leaves” and “holds” the world—will cause no problems or pain to others.
The next illustration depicts “her world” that’s Nancy’s “personal garden.” this particular young lady’s “world” includes an affinity for computers, Pepsi, making money, and of course the love of her dog. Let’s imagine further that an addiction to watermelon happens to play a dominant role in her world.
The history of humanity is filled with examples of how individuals, families, towns, or nations crossed the line into the “worlds” or “gardens” of other individuals or nations using deception, lies, force, aggression, fear, brutal force, terror, oppression, war and death.
In the third illustration, we see harmony among different worlds. Jeff and Sarah in the third tray have different interests-they “hold” “their personal world” in different ways. Jeff enjoys music, karate and soft drinks, while Sarah enjoys Mexican food, school books, and the Bible.
Yet, with all their differences, they are sharing the same world, and are living in peace with no complaints, no screams, no yelling, and no shooting. They have agreed to live and let live. They have agreed that the kitchen at home is a “family garden” and not “a personal garden” and everything has a place and everything should be in its place at all times.
They all have agreed to respect the majority’s desire to put up a traffic light down their street, and they will obey the man-made laws. And they will not interfere with the freedom and responsibility of others to live, to rest, to play, to work, to save, to spend and to buy what they need, want, or desire.
They all agree also to have and pass rules as laws with others to be able to keep as their own legal personal, family, city, state or national property. And many times, for the sake of love, peace, harmony, and common sense, they know, they might have to say “let us agree that we disagree. Let us go to sleep and talk about it some other time.”
The image of the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. symbolizes a storage place of happy or unhappy mental world of each of the people in this painting. The building symbolizes the storage place for their individual beliefs, their memories and the contents of their respective minds, “their personal happy or unhappy memory folders and files in their own Personal Sears Tower” their own mental worlds which create their habits, their character, their personality, and their destiny.
For us to exist, achieve our goals, be happy, and live in harmony with each other, across races, religions and nations, we must understand and accept that the content in each of our own “Personal Sears Towers” is different. This in large part is what makes each of us so unique with unique “personal gardens.”
Yes, live and let live. Plant roses in your garden, I will plant spinach if you don’t mind. Let us have an understanding dialog of our different worlds. We must learn to accept, celebrate and cherish our differences. By so doing, the delicate balance between people’s differences—their “worlds,” their own “personal Sears Towers,” can be maintained, in balance, and we can be happy and flourish as individuals with freedom and responsibility and as a diverse society on a very tiny planet of ours, that is our only Home.