As I set out for my lunchtime walk…

By Denis Bunbury

I passed by Goodey’s Bookstore and read their pavement notice board:

“To be, is first of all to accept yourself as you really are.”

Self acceptance… “Ah yes,” I agreed!  “The key to so much wisdom".

My walk had barely taken me into Market Rd before I was aware that this ‘simple’ aphorism contained much more than at first meets the eye.  The first thought that had come to my mind was a sort of inner confession.  I accept myself, warts and all.  But I knew that I was, and am, more than my weaknesses and mistakes. I then thought of my strengths, my achievements.  These too are a part of accepting myself as I really am.

By now I am part way down Market Rd and convinced that I have not yet done justice to the goal of accepting myself.  Maybe there was something of what my future is to make of me, as well as the influence of the past, that needs to be taken into account.  I recalled a story I had read somewhere about Picasso painting Gertrude Stein.  Picasso put Gertrude through the ordeal of 80 sittings, but when he was finished, he was dissatisfied with his work and said irritably,  “I can’t see you when I look”. Picasso abruptly painted out the whole of the head and went off to Spain for several months leaving the painting unfinished.  When returned he painted in the head without seeing his model again.  Critics said that there was no likeness whatsoever to Gertrude.  Picasso made the following reply:

“Just wait and see, everyone thinks that she is not atall like her portrait but never mind.  In the end she
 will manage to look just like it.”

By the time that Gertrude Stein died, many acclaimed that the painting was an admirable likeness.  So Picasso’s prophecy was fulfilled.  Picasso saw what so many, even perhaps including Gertrude Stein herself, had not seen.  He saw what his artistic subject was to become.

Even so for myself, in my act of self-acceptance.  I decided that I wanted to be welcoming of not just what I consciously wanted to become in the future, but also awake to becoming what some others might see in me, that I couldn’t or wouldn’t see without their help. So “accepting myself as I really am” is a project of manifold dimensions, and I completed my lunchtime walk realising that there was a lot more depth to the task than I had as yet plumbed.

I was, however, already grateful for the people in my life who had loved me enough to enable me to love myself.  And I am thankful to the minor Picassos whose vision of me offered me the opportunity to see differently about myself.  And I had reached a few conclusions:  firstly, accepting myself is not a solitary task, as others are intimately involved.  Secondly, I myself need something of Picasso’s sight as I behold myself.  Thirdly, I need to be patient.  Commenting on Picasso’s method of observation, Roland Penrose wrote:

In consideration the act of perception, Picasso has always been amazed at the discrepancy between seeing an object and knowing it.  Its superficial appearance is to him absurdly inadequate.  Seeing is not enough, neither is the aid that the other senses can bring.  There are other faculties of the mind, which must be brought in to play if perception is to lead to understanding. 

More than enough to engage me on further lunchtime walks…