Story & Lesson Highlights with Yoram Gal of world wide

We recently had the chance to connect with Yoram Gal and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Yoram, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: Are you walking a path—or wandering?
I have been walking a path since age 12. It gets more clear and focused as the years advance. Some of the stretches on this path are not planned, they appear and take over, but in retrospect, they are all integrally part of the predestined, almost, pre-planned path.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am an artist. I have been one since age 12. I paint. I write. I was an actor and theater director for 30 years. I made a feature movie. I am now integrating all my passions and my skills in the arts into one major project: An animated movie / tv series call YOGI AND CAMI SAVE THE WORLD (tikun olam). I wrote a novel, and I am using paintings of it, and AI animations tools to create the movie. So I am combining my writing with my painting, my acting and my directing and it’s the most thrilling experience. At the same time I am still also painting big canvases and selling them in art shows, in galleries, in my own studio gallery in Jaffa.

Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I was a scared little boy, terrified of the world. Scared of people, of events coming up, of everything. I inherited my grandmother’s and my mother’s basic panic mode. I felt worthless, weak. I basically hated my own self as a coward of life. When at age 12 I began going through a Freudian therapy and simultaneously started to paint at high school and received kudos, appreciation and warmth from people, plus excelled at my school studies, got prizes and top grades, my self confidence began to slowly creep up on my basic fear and feeling of worthlessness. I began to envision my life as an artist and slowly, slowly over the next decades grew less scared, less stricken with an inferiority complex. I began in my later teens to write a diary which became the core of my creativity, my vision. It grew offshoots into my future stage plays, screenplays, novels, paintings.

What have been the defining wounds of your life—and how have you healed them?
Like I said before, my basic panic defined my life. Mixed with my abandonment fears which probably began to be my basic defining trait at age 1.5 years, when my parents divorced after fierce fighting and yelling throughout my first 18 months on earth. Then I grew up with my grandmother and great grandmother, as my mother lived with us too but was hardly ever home, as she worked, studied at university and dated potential new husbands. My formative years were shaped by a constant longing for my mother to come home, and an overwhelming fear of being abandoned. She would sometimes arrive at midnight, wake me up and hug me. But leave for work early morning before I woke up to go to kindergarten. My fatherless childhood, and absent mother almost all the time, defined my huge desertion fears which dominated my life and ruined many potential parts of it. At age 42 I went to have an Adlerian therapy which helped unravel and pinpoint those desertion fears as my core wound and since then I have been healing them non stop. My art, my writing, my painting, my acting, my directing were all part of the ongoing therapy. It started at age 12 and is still continuing. I can say that at age 60 was a turning point when I felt that I overcame my basic initial wound of desertion fears and started loving myself, my life. The art was my life saver.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What truths are so foundational in your life that you rarely articulate them?
Oh me oh my… I believe art can change the world and does change the world, for the better and that I can do it. I am doing it step by step through paintings and writing, but have an ambitious vision of having all my writings published in 200 languages and making humanity heal of its diseases. It’s embarrassing to say such childish things. But when you ask me bluntly I have to tell you the truth: I believe I can heal humanity through the process of healing myself. When I lost fear of life, I felt I can convey through stories I write and paintings I paint that idealistic, romantic view of the world which can heal other people’s traumas. I receive many thanks from people who say my paintings make them happy. Make them feel better. i.e. in small quantities I already have proof that I am bettering some people’s lives.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
The true story. Of how I fought from early childhood to overcome my intrinsically inherited genes of panic and fear of the world and how through several therapies and through making art I pulled myself up by my hair out of the hole in the ground of petrified near-paralysis as a child, to confidently flying all over the world, creating multiple pieces of art (theater plays, acting roles, novels, screenplays, paintings and now a combination of all these into animated AI based movies). Through crisis after crisis, several marriages and partners, giving up offers of money and fame for pursuing my truth in art, knowing that only being honest, persistent, patient and persevering will pay off in the end, and devoting my life to the almost infantile belief that art can and will change the world for the better. How I replaced the father I did not have in my most formative years age 0-6 with multiple genius father-figures, the greatest writers, painters, musicians, filmmakers, philosophers and inventors whom I talked and still talk to, consult with, and learn from. From my fatherless early childhood lemon, I made fantastic later life lemonade.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
All images were created by myself, Yoram Gal

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