Life lessons from an artist

Hi buddies!!!

I am back!!! If you are also a blogger then you would appreciate the fact that we do reach a saturation point...or ateast we feel so...I did feel that way for the past few days...And that's why I had this brief hiatus..

And while I was complaining about this to my best friend...she reminded me of a video in TED website that I had shared with her few weeks back...

The video is titled as 'Five lives of an artist'. This video extols refreshingly unpretentious and honest vibes from the speaker Raghava KK. Now before you read the post any further please watch this brilliant video if you haven't till now.

Now that I presume you have watched the video, let me share a few observations that have inspired me to write this post:

• Innocence is a delightful trait but it must often be coupled with courage and a strong belief to strike the perfect symphony in life. KK Ragahava received a punishment in school that detached him from his passion of cartooning for long as a kid but he got back to pursue the passion by using a simple logic of making his principal happy :-) . Passion for art along with basic sensitivity towards relationship building helped him to continue his passion.

• Whenever you follow your heart, do it with a full stride- His decision of dropping out of school was very critical especially from an Indian context. Yet he lived up to his promise of being disciplined, curious, learn [being a learner], hardworking, self sustaining. I am sure that he has achieved this humongous amount of success and happiness in his profession because he passionately imbibed those values since the time he first promised his father.

• Collaboration is necessary- One aspect about his speech I loved the most was the way in which he appreciated and valued each and every collaboration he made throughout his journey. I simply admired the way he valued the contribution of his mother :-), wife :-), father :-) and especially the children :-). When was the last time we learned a few lessons from a kid we know??? He indeed learned a lot from the kids. How to be more happy??... How to take ruthless criticism from kids in the right spirit??? How to be much more cooler;-) ??? Well!!! Lets keep our adult ego aside and learn a few life lessons from the kids around :-)

• Ownership: The cartoon related to 9/11 incident left him without a job. It was probably an innocent effort from his side but it required a little more sensitivity from him. Sometimes we get driven by our passion to such an extent that we forget a few important elements of our life. Hence, ownership is a lesson which can be learned from the video.

• This shall pass too: He went through a very dark phase in his life when his mother fell ill and his customers were not able to appreciate the honesty in his paintings. His friends left him. Yet, in this video he passionately talks about colours, his success, his family and so much more. So life can offer a few darker shades but if we are a great painter from within then we can surely add beautiful colours to our life.

• Passion with compassion: I felt inspired in the way he created job opportunies for the billboard painters and learned the art of painting from them. That not only requires compassion but also humility.

• If you believe you can then you can: One of his deepest desire was to see his paintings dance. He believed in the dream and he achieved it by painting his dancers :-)

• Do that special act for the special person: I am sure what touched you the most in the video was the story of the small kid who died of cancer and how he touched her few last days with happiness...hope...and COLOURS...

After watching that video, I felt like becoming a painter. I am not sure if I will be able to be great with paper and colours but I strongly feel that if we truly want then we can infuse a but of art in our profession and daily life.


Being a painter is awesome but what's even better is believing and living like a painter. Thats something we all can do.


Keep adding colours to life :-)