There are many reasons to hang art on the wall. Some are obvious, like to finish a room, to show off to friends or as an investment. But what about the less obvious, more important reasons?
1. Regaining sensitivity
Balance is hard to achieve in your non-stop world, with adverts distracting you, and phones begging for attention. Art can help you regain your sensitivity to things that actually matter, peeling away skin deep desires like the novelty of new things and glamour.
Laughter and Friends. Never forget who your friends are, hold on to them, and keep the laughter flowing.
2. Remembering what matters
Your memory is a funny old thing. Somethings you can remember in fantastic detail, and others, like the drive to work this morning, can be completely forgotten the moment you arrive. The question is, do you remember the right things, keeping your best insights available to you?
Research shows that memory is less like a movie, and more like a play – subtly different each time it's performed. This is perhaps where art can help. It can act to remind you of what is really important, and provide itself as more of a constant frame of reference. Art helps you to edit down complexity and focus what is most meaningful.
Family, Love and the Stage. Love your family, protect and enjoy them, and don't let your surroundings and lifestyle distract you from their beauty.
3. Retaining hope
With the 24 hour reel of constant bad news stories, it's all too easy to get a completely incorrect impression of the world and humanity. Art can help you to keep perspective on reality, and not let those shouting the loudest, skew your world. Look to art to keep the cheerful and pleasant in view.
Sharing in the Rain. While some days might not be perfect, it shouldn't stop you from spending quality time with the people you love.
4.1. Slowing judgement
It is likely that you walk around only thinking about yourself, or those whose stories you know, between the screaming and shouting of the modern, attention grabbing world. The problem is, you can easily mis-attribute the serenity of the general public, those people whose stories you donÅt know, and start making comparisons with your own lives, and the stories you do know. Art can help give you other people's stories, that can sit in your mind, ready to say "hang on, perhaps she's having a bad day" instead of internally berating the checkout person. You might go through life with greater ease. Art can tell you stories about other people's lives. Giving you a frame of reference to look upon them.
Sorrow. We should strive to remember that everyone we pass on the street has a story every bit as complicated and compelling as our own.
4.2. Feeling down, but not alone
Remember that other people might be having a bad day. It helps you when you feel down, as it shows others have felt this way before, and that we're not alone in this feeling.
5. Describing feelings and emotions
How often do you find it hard to describe how you're feeling to someone else? What about to yourself? Minds don't truly work in words, and emotions are often difficult to describe. Your mind is more visual than education and society would have you believe. Because of this visual nature, art can help you identify what is central to you, but hard to put into words. Art can act like a conduit, fast tracking your thoughts to an event or memory, allowing you to understand things in your past that you enjoyed, but perhaps at the time you wondered what the hell you were doing. Art provides you with something you can point up, and say "This is me".
6. Finding the missing
Art can help you fill in your missing pieces. It helps you balance your characters, by showing you what is missing. This explains why the minds of those who travel at 100 mph like bare concrete walls, as they provide balance to an otherwise hectic mind. Different art talks to different people.
Leaving it all Behind. People move, they leave behind friends and family to go into the unknown. Maybe they go by ship. Often, like the bike on the right, there is something to balance the unknown. A job, a partner, or even just a dream to do something new.
7. Asking yourself better questions
As a human, your greatest skill is also your biggest weakness. The ability to build "rule of thumbs" that enable you to quickly navigate the world, without having to think with depth. The problem occurs when you apply one while forgetting its definition:
A rule of thumb is a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation. It is an easily learned and easily applied procedure for approximately calculating or recalling some value, or for making some determination. Wikipedia
The longer you do not question your rules of thumb, the harder it can be to break them when they invariably turn out to be incorrect. Art can remind you to question your beliefs, and challenge the status quo. It can show you something that doesn't fit in with your rules of thumb, throwing up an error in your thinking. Art helps to provoke, enabling you to ask better questions about yourself and the world around you.
Curiosity. Kids are constantly curious. As we age we replace curiosity with procrastination through boring TV shows, and repeat news. Turn it off and get curious.
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