I recently heard someone talking about baking oatmeal cookies. He listed all sorts of necessary ingredients: flour, oats, baking soda, eggs, butter.
Sugar was not on his list. Oatmeal cookies, he noted, don’t need sugar. Yet when we choose to add sugar, the cookies are a whole lot tastier. An oatmeal cookie without sugar is like our world without the arts.
Whether it be watching a movie, visiting a gallery, listening to music or going to live theatre, these events are the sugar in our-otherwise-oatmeal-cookie-lives. Just imagine the world without the likes of Elton John, Picasso, Van Gogh, Mozart or Steven Spielberg. The arts can provide a little sweetness… a little indulgence… a little fun… a little beauty. Bring on the sugar!