Painting.
Once upon a time, there was a painter. One day, he painted a very beautiful woman on his canvas. He grew so attached to her that he wanted to eat with her, sleep with her, love her, spend the rest of his life with her, and said he couldn't live without her. Others thought he's a lunatic - it's just a painting, not a real person. Another day, he painted a very horrible woman. He feared her so much that he wanted to get away from her, burn the canvas, and never ever see her again. Others thought he's out of his mind - how could he possibly develop such strong emotions towards a painting? A fiction? An illusion? A non-existence? (a re-telling of a story told by S. N. Goenka)
But in reality, that's what we all do. We paint pictures and create untruthful images of one another and react to them constantly. Each of us bear all these pictures and images and run around and eat and drink and sleep and get insomnia and dream of bizarre things and forget about them in the morning and get up restless and go to work and drink too much coffee and read books that are too deep to comprehend and have conversations that are either too complicated to follow or too boring to carry on and miss the sunset and miss the sunrise and regret about missing the sunset and the sunrise and have misunderstanding with someone you care about but never get around to straighten things out and lose contact with someone for years until you barely remember him or her or what happened or not happened or should have happened but didn't or shouldn't have happened but did happen anyway and listen to music and suddenly realize yourself buried in tears but cannot pinpoint which soft spot it manages to touch or maybe you're already full of soft spots that wherever you're touched you'd cry as if you're made of water and listen to different types of music and learn things that you know you will never have enough time to learn to the level you aspire to reach and spend tremendous amount of time wondering why someone you love doesn't love you back while someone you don't love loves you like crazy and read poetry about lost love or maybe it's actually about autumn and go to social events with a contrived smile and talk about the weather today and the weather next week and travel plans and career plans and life plans and feel at the verge of collapsing and breaking into pieces if someone just pokes you unexpectedly and start sending your mind somewhere far far away like a countryside with endless grass or a vineyard that smells like fresh grapes and earth or a mountain with labyrinthine paths but no one else but you and whomever you would like to bring along and get lost and find your way again and look back just in time to understand how lucky you've been and scrutinize all those pictures and images you've been carrying all along and notice all the changes that you like or dislike and sigh slightly because life is never the way you want it to be but you can create something better out of it and smile sincerely to yourself and the person you wanted to bring along to the mountain and feel happy.
That sentence is too long. I agree. But at least it ended on a happy note. W. S. Maugham once said, “We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” Don't know why it suddenly came to my mind. But my point is, I should start learning to paint.
But in reality, that's what we all do. We paint pictures and create untruthful images of one another and react to them constantly. Each of us bear all these pictures and images and run around and eat and drink and sleep and get insomnia and dream of bizarre things and forget about them in the morning and get up restless and go to work and drink too much coffee and read books that are too deep to comprehend and have conversations that are either too complicated to follow or too boring to carry on and miss the sunset and miss the sunrise and regret about missing the sunset and the sunrise and have misunderstanding with someone you care about but never get around to straighten things out and lose contact with someone for years until you barely remember him or her or what happened or not happened or should have happened but didn't or shouldn't have happened but did happen anyway and listen to music and suddenly realize yourself buried in tears but cannot pinpoint which soft spot it manages to touch or maybe you're already full of soft spots that wherever you're touched you'd cry as if you're made of water and listen to different types of music and learn things that you know you will never have enough time to learn to the level you aspire to reach and spend tremendous amount of time wondering why someone you love doesn't love you back while someone you don't love loves you like crazy and read poetry about lost love or maybe it's actually about autumn and go to social events with a contrived smile and talk about the weather today and the weather next week and travel plans and career plans and life plans and feel at the verge of collapsing and breaking into pieces if someone just pokes you unexpectedly and start sending your mind somewhere far far away like a countryside with endless grass or a vineyard that smells like fresh grapes and earth or a mountain with labyrinthine paths but no one else but you and whomever you would like to bring along and get lost and find your way again and look back just in time to understand how lucky you've been and scrutinize all those pictures and images you've been carrying all along and notice all the changes that you like or dislike and sigh slightly because life is never the way you want it to be but you can create something better out of it and smile sincerely to yourself and the person you wanted to bring along to the mountain and feel happy.
That sentence is too long. I agree. But at least it ended on a happy note. W. S. Maugham once said, “We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” Don't know why it suddenly came to my mind. But my point is, I should start learning to paint.
