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“These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession”
Known for his paintings of landscapes, Monet created over 250 pieces for his water lilies series. He was obsessed with the way that light reflected on water and dedicated his life to trying to capture this phenomenon, often trying to capture light from different vantage points simultaneously.
His pursuit reminds me of words from the character Katsumoto in The Last Samurai when he says “The perfect cherry blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one, and it would not be a wasted life."
Characters likes Monet and Katsumoto seem to share a view that life is simple. That perhaps the point of life is to go through it and potentially that you can’t do it wrong, although both men likely believe in authenticity and intentionality. That the things worth pursuing are not always far out and grandiose but timeless, accessible and arguably ordinary. Biblical traditions support this with lessons like the ten commandants which largely revolve around the way we treat people, a simple concept.
Simplicity seems counter cultural in a world that values success, fame, achievement and the Western stories of the redemptive hero. Could a meaningful life be one as simple as prioritizing kindness and the admiration of beauty? It is tough to accept as our culture constantly sends the message to strive for more. Like many others I have had many experiences where I have pushed towards achievement only to question the underlying purpose at the finish line. Experiences like this can result in an unsettling sense of disillusionment.
Recently I have began to wonder if a lot of our anxiety comes from the desire to understand or know how things are “supposed to be done” when doing anything: choosing a sport, school, friend group, career path, place to live, life partner or charting the path we believe will lead towards a meaningful life. Perhaps there is wisdom in Alan Watts’s definition of faith that “has no preoccupations” - a recognition that playbooks, formulas, and preconceived notions each have their limits. Monet said “people discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love”.
One of my favorite poems captures a fictionalized Monet refusing eye surgery, attempting to explain himself with a doctor who doesn’t understand how he sees the world. When the world feels distant, foreign or disorienting, this poem can serve as a helpful return to center.
Monet Refuses the Operation
BY LISEL MUELLER
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.