Writing from The Heart: The Real Message of Pygmalion

Writing from The Heart

"Writing from The Heart" is a workshop on creative writing, creative drawing, and creative drama. There are three available versions of this workshop: one for beginners on the secondary, tertiary, and graduate levels, and another for practitioners. A third version of this workshop is designed as an outreach program to disadvantaged and underserved audiences such as the disabled, the poor and the marginalized, victims of human trafficking, battered women and abused children, drug rehabilitation center residents, child combatants, children in conflict with the law, prisoners, and gang leaders. This third version incorporates creativity and problem awareness, conflict resolution, crisis intervention, trauma therapy, and peacemaking.

Friday, October 16, 2015

The Real Message of Pygmalion

When I was working at ________________________________, I had a young staff member named Noel who once confessed to me, in a semi-drunken stupor, that he cannot stand any kind of imperfection in a woman, be it a skin blemish, a slight deformity, or a habit, and that, once he notes such an imperfection in any woman he is dating, he abandons her completely and for good. That was in 1978. I wonder if he has found his perfect woman, and if he is married now. The irony is, he is not unique. Many men are like that.

Despite all the deconstructions the story of Pygmalion has gone through, the real message is not that a creator can raise an inanimate statue to the level of humanity. Sadly, the real message is that the creator of a perfect work of art expects humans to be as perfect as his work of art, and nothing less.