Poise

Mounted on Sölk Marble · Height: 36cm · Porcelain · Crystal Glaze · 24ct Gold · Silver Leaf

There is a way of standing in the world that has nothing to do with being unshaken, and everything to do with knowing where your centre is.

Poise represents the quiet decision to remain yourself while everything around you shifts. It is how you hold yourself when the world tests you.

Not rigid.
Not untouched.
But rooted. Deeply.

We confuse this with pride.
With armour or even arrogance. 
With the loud declaration of one's own greatness.

But poise is the opposite.

It is the noise a person makes when they have not yet found the silence inside themselves.

The one who overestimates has built a tower. The one who carries poise has found the ground.

True poise is born from self-love and not from the love that adorns itself and asks to be admired, but the love that has looked at everything it is and said: I will not abandon this.

Your worth was never given to you. It was never earned. It is the sense of self you were born with, before anyone praised you, before anyone failed you, before you learned to measure yourself against anything at all.

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants love from us. And perhaps the most courageous thing is not to rise above yourself but to finally stand where you are, without apology, without armour, and let that be enough. Be vulnerable AND brave AND kind all the same, without loosing your boundries. 

To live with this piece is to live with a mirror that does not flatter and does not diminish. It reflects only what is true... that you have always had the right to stand exactly as you are.