It’s about a man falling from a 100 story building.
Passing the floors on the way down he keeps telling himself:
So far, so good.
When I heard the above saying for the first time something shifted in my mind. Those lines stuck in my head and inevitably turned into my personal metaphor for life! Beyond doubt I knew – the falling man is me and every story of the building represents one year of my life.
Counting backwards I’m currently flying past the 55th floor of my personal skyscraper; since the jump, I’ve relocated from Poland to Germany (89th floor), won my first and only slam-dunk contest at a provincial basketball tournament (83rd floor). And finally graduated from university with degrees in engineering and economics (80th floor), which everyone involved acknowledged with a sigh of relief. After another two floors of open-plan offices, PowerPoint presentations and missed days of sunshine, I realized that I will pass each floor only once because I’m not wearing a parachute!
This insight was mixed with an extraordinarily strong memory of an earlier experience, much more of an experienced feeling. A feeling that overwhelmed me during a visit to MoMA-NY. Surrounded by all the fantastic works of art, a complex mixture of admiration, awe, ambition and happiness flooded through me. This gave rise to an irrepressible desire in me to one day create a painting that could evoke similarly strong emotions in the viewer. Suddenly the existential angst was gone!
At the 67th floor, I quit my job, bought some art materials and started painting. According to my calculation I still have 55 floors to improve as a painter, as long as my fall is not rudely shortened by a balcony, a window ledge or some other unexpected protrusion. In this lifelong learning process, you as viewers of my paintings are my witnesses, my support, my headwind, my criticism, my audience and my motivation. Even if I don’t know whether my talent will ultimately be enough to reach the goal I set myself above by the time I hit the ground, I am sure of one thing: I will always be painting!
btw – we all are falling!