Sunday, May 30, 2010

Being out of your depth is one of the most marvelous experiences that life can bestow on us.

It may sound paradoxical or even outright absurd, but being out of your depth is one of the most marvelous experiences that life can bestow on us.

When you have a really moving experience, you feel that you're out of your depth to grasp it. Something is definitely there, but you cannot know or describe that something as a collection of explicit expressions. The experience flows and then disappears like tears in the rain, and you're left with a bittersweet aftertaste which you cling to like the last lifeline. If you let the small trace go, then the giant apparition that crossed your mind for a brief period would also disappear into the great void embracing all existence.

When in a social situation, like giving a lecture, or discussing things, or arguing that they should employ you, being out of your depth, or, even worse, letting people know that you are out of your depth is a nightmare. You feel so ashamed at the unintended display of your own incompetence. You feel you would like to hide in a hole. You wish you would disappear into the air. You wish you had never been born.

In audience with a great work of art, on the other hand, you can enjoy the state of being out of your depth alone. You need not let anyone else know your state of blissful misery. You can pant, roll, sigh, cry, regret and aspire in solitude. When the tears dry, you can start building your life all over again, as a changed person who sees the world in a slightly different manner.

It is good to be out of your depth from time to time. Especially when you do it alone.

2 comments:

renpoo said...

Hi, Dr. Mogi.

Recent your articles moves my affections a lot. This time, I had a quick search on the phrase "out of your depth".


I'm one of beginers in visual arts field and in confrontation to my life itself since I have a strange kind of schezophrenie.

(Loot at these, if it's able.)
http://renpoo.cgsociety.org/gallery/
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=43&t=400591&page=61&pp=15


I wanna pursuit "the existence of yourself before your father and mother was born". I thought I had met the existence once in a long, long time before, but it was not enough deep. So I decided to chalenge it more and more in the next lives in reincarnation.

Take care, Dr.
Good bye.




P.S.
You will have interest on this book. I know the photographer.
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E7%8B%AC%E6%A5%BD%E2%80%95%E7%86%8A%E8%B0%B7%E5%AE%88%E4%B8%80%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C-%E8%97%A4%E6%A3%AE-%E6%AD%A6/dp/4418045147/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275186720&sr=8-6

Yuzu said...

Dear:Mr.Mogi
It is the surface matters at everywhere in the world.
So I very want to sense that various great work arts and growth by my selves.