Life as a painting... and where we stand when we view it.

Since my first year in college, when I began delving into the depth of a Jewish world view, I have combined many different explanations and analogies within my mind to understand this world and our purpose in it.

One of the first analogies I heard has always stuck with me.  At each stage in our life, we are drawing a few lines and putting different splotches of color onto a canvas.  Sometimes it can look pretty or seem exciting or boring, or even dreary.  Only at the end of our life can we step back from the canvas to see how all of those random colors and lines blend together to form a beautiful painting.  

This analogy has also helped me at different points in my life when I struggled with emuna (faith).  If I believe G-d's hand is guiding the paintbrush, even those big black splotches have meaning and make a positive contribution to the painting as a whole.

Freshman year of college, on one of my first weekends back home, I tried to apply this analogy to my life with the following poem:

(written November 23, 2004)

Every place has a story.

I walk down the street and memories race.

How can so much meaning

be embedded in a place?

The world is my canvas,

but up to this time

I had only walked along

a thinly drawn line.

And along that line,

I knew it all.

Now reimmersed,

I so easily recall.

With every step I take,

I remember the feel.

My naive perceptions of life

once again seem real.

But although on some layer

that line remains,

the picture around it is forming

and its essence is changed...

Now why have I started thinking of this analogy over the past week?

I've started to look at relationships as paintings.  When we're in the day to day involvements of a relationship, we see only the color splotches and lines.  We see it so close up that a little splotch that's not exactly where it's supposed to be can nag at us or become bothersome.  We analyze the line formations.

When you have a distance relationship for a few months, you take a few steps back from the painting.  You see and appreciate the beautiful picture formed by all those little lines and splotches.  Now, as Yoni has returned home, I try to keep that big picture in mind.