FAILURE

Failure is like a spiky crystal because it seems to throw away all of your hard work in the bin. It's a clear crystal because what else can there be except what you see? You only see that you failed, in the beginning. Once the mind takes control of the heart again, it's easier to see what the crystal was hiding inside itself all along: a chance to grow. Almost like looking at the first bloomed flower in the garden on the start of spring. Nonetheless, it takes time to realise this. In the meantime, you build a box to wrap yourself in; black because you prefer to see nothing except your misery reflected back at you. You can also see other people's successes (the small blue flower) against your black box and that just adds fuel to your fire. Inside your head, you let yourself wish for others' successes, even though it solves nothing at all.

Right after I finished the painting, I realised that there is another concept that this drawing fits very well. Almost scaringly so and, with some more deep thinking, it's not hard to link the two concepts together (one kind of leads to the other)...

EXPECTATIONS

The fact that we are all so different from each other seems to be our best trait, yet our doom too. In order to meet the expectations others put on us, sometimes we trap our passions (the colourful flower) inside a beautiful, clear crystal. Every time we look inside ourselves we can still see our caged ability, but strangers might only see the outward bitter personality and skip ahead. If we can't see pursue it, we keep our passion inside a box because it's just too hard to throw it away. Expectations drive us towards other roads that are strenuous to follow. We try our best to put the same determination we put in our passion inside this new path (the blue flower), but we end up burning up our motivations. And the more that expectation burns, the more the caged passion glows.