For Andrea Lijoy Shields, radical openness becomes the shield for the inner most self against the monster called “society’s expectations.” She explains: There is something about vulnerability that is inviting. When you read these stories (in why i write, why i create), each person becomes a little more human and you can see yourself in them. When someone is so willing to be open, you want to enter in. Even if you don’t have it all together, that fact that you are trying to find yourself is most important. It’s the pursuit that matters.
Mentor Edward Monovich
Andrea Lijoy Shields’ philosophy of “Radical Openness” opposes today’s prevalent, winner-take-all attitude. In contemporary mass media culture and in geopolitical struggles, it strikes me how easy it is to tear down Art, culture, tradition and diversity. Vulnerability can be difficult to cultivate, especially when media channels define success as taking what is yours and humiliating the competition. By contrast, Art is a place where all boats can rise simultaneously, where I don’t win because you lose. Rather, we win together. This is the key to creating good Art and the antidote to the “rawness of mass society.” Andrea Lijoy understands this, both in concept and in practice. Through her willingness to share her explorations and to listen to new approaches, Andrea makes herself vulnerable. Her “evolution of self” benefits the community. Art’s magical lens inverts intensely personal efforts (like why i write, why i create) and self-expression becomes universalized.
Opportunity
Andrea offers us the opportunity to view vulnerability as neither good nor bad. She provides hints on the upcoming generation’s lack of interest in traditional ways of categorizing experience in dualistic terms: good/bad, winners/losers. She invites us to look at the limitations of our social conditioning and come back to choice—the choice to show up with our full humanity. Poet David Whyte writes: “To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature…The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate.”
Andrea-Lijoy Shields, Fashion Designer, 2015 Participant
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