Silence your inner killjoy

Despite our very concerted efforts, we can be so harsh on ourselves without even knowing it. Representation pic

The ink hadn't settled yet on last week's column when the universe decided it was time to test if I could stand by my public commitment to embrace failure. I got assigned a date for the two-language test at the A2 level which I'd decided to apply for some months ago assuming it would motivate me to learn Italian. I now need to cram the vocabulary and the verbs, and I keep telling myself that there is no penalty for failing. The test is designed to see if I have certain faculties in German and Italian, and if I don't pass, it only means I need to continue practising and using these languages. But it's not so easy, because I've internalised that failure is a measure of my self-worth, or I've been conditioned to want to excel, perhaps out of fear of the consequences of not passing.

Despite our very concerted efforts, we can be so harsh on ourselves without even knowing it, blaming ourselves if things don't pan out the way we expected them to without making any allowances for systemic failures that are almost customised to make an individual feel small in front of state machineries. We often don't see how our patterns of behaviour are driven by capitalist notions of time, productivity and efficiency, or even how these concepts get further complicated in the face of patriarchal governance that enables corruption, deceit and other forms of bureaucratic violence.

When, recently, I came upon the notion of ‘anti-capitalist affirmations', I had an ‘aha' moment. I don't remember the various statements you were invited to incorporate into your everyday consciousness to subvert the internalised patriarchal conditioning, but it included simple suggestions, like doing things because you find joy in them, not for any specific outcome. This struck a nerve because I'd not so long ago seen a TikTok influencer tell her followers that having a hobby didn't mean you had to be good at something. She showed her drawing that she admitted looked like a child had done it and said she'd spent her Saturday morning doing it, and she didn't care that it didn't look professional. It just was the manifestation of her absorption in an activity, playing with paint, expressing herself with her brushes, examining the nature of her subject by trying to replicate it.

It took me back to two years ago, when I bought myself watercolours and was obsessed with trying to draw tulips and magnolias. I always felt a bit disappointed by how terrible my attempts were, even though, I was drawing on my penchant for observation and attention. I had been photographing tulips, watching YouTube tutorials on how to depict them, how to shade with watercolour, how to mix the colours, and it had made me feel alive. But I allowed my anxiety with failure to corrupt my relationship with the hobby instead of pursuing it further. The artist Orijit Sen, who I know and follow on Facebook, recently had this post: ‘I meet so many people, including artists and designers, who say ‘I can't draw'. Actually there's no such thing as ‘can't draw'. Just say ‘I don't draw.' You can, but you don't - for whatever reason.' How wise is that?

I still remember the stigma of getting a ‘C' in Drawing in the third standard. We had to draw a caterpillar, copying its contours from a larger one pasted on the blackboard. My caterpillar was disproportionate, and I'd ended up spilling water on my surface and my watercolours were all blotchy. The accident allowed for a C instead of D, which meant I could pass, but it felt humiliating. My takeaway as a child was that I was not good at drawing and so I knew better than to pursue it. Such a heavy emphasis was (and continues to be placed) on drawing as a pre-requisite for being an artist.

Being an artist is about inhabiting a certain consciousness, I can say that now, after having been an art critic for more than a decade. There are artists who can draw perfectly either from life or imagination, but their work often lacks soul because it isn't reflective of an engaging consciousness.

I often feel the same way about Math and languages. The way you are taught these subjects has so much to do with how your aptitude is nourished. Maybe I did have a skill for math. An aptitude test I did when I was 15 revealed that I was good with numbers. It was part of a career test and when the psychologist told me I could consider a job in accounting, I found it totally outlandish. It's because, by then, I'd already internalised a mental block against it.

A large part of feminist decolonising is really about undoing these mental blocks and understanding the degree to which precious elements of our personality have been framed by systemic variables. Anti-capitalist affirmations are a good way to begin to reclaim one's time, passions and hobbies and to play our way through life instead of taking ourselves too seriously.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.