AUGUST 4, 2021 – Yesterday evening we were joined by friends in a full-scale repast, a piece of living art framed in a tastefully appointed setting. In one corner of the painting we partook from a charcuterie board bearing cheeses, fruits, pâté, and specialty sausage, all perfectly arranged in resplendent abundance. To the side, wine well-chosen and artfully mixed drinks were served and sipped. At center stage arose a sumptuous meal, drawing us to a table festooned with colored coverings. The entire scene was awash in banter, laughter, story-telling, and generously endowed personality.
The gathering around food, drink, and conversation was a reminder that life is one big work of art, morphing continuously from genre to genre, much as daylight changes with the weather, the time of day, the seasons. As we interact with one another and nature, our words and works interlock as if in a grand photomontage of civilization.
This unending process produces a paradox in which the individual’s significance moves in two directions at once. As the number and frequency of interactions expand, the influence of any one individual diminishes. Yet simultaneously, exponentiality of interaction among individuals (think 176,000 commercial flights a day worldwide; 145 million online minutes per day) accelerates change within civilization.
Thus, while my individual brushstrokes on humanity’s canvas diminish in relative significance, my words and actions are also leveraged into a piece of grand art more dynamic than ever before in the history of humankind.
Where this process leads can’t be divined. Speculation is the only porthole. Will the fabric that binds us rip and tear, disrupting our tableau beyond repair? Will the tapestry dissolve into a vat of acid of our own making? Will the stage on which we play explode by our own hands, then implode into a black hole of time? Or will the picture transition from one image to another in age-old fashion until a comet strikes or the sun burns out?
I ponder this in the shade of trees standing tall and still in a moment of calm. Beyond my happy place scurry other humans, caught like frenetic fish in the Sea of Tumult. Occasionally, I too take to those waters and swim warily in waters of a food chain devoid of haute cuisine. But having eaten well enough thus far, I’m no longer driven to hunt in that sea. I live mostly within view of it, observing, sometimes with the aid of binoculars but usually without; always with eyeglasses, albeit with an aging prescription.
From this vantage point, I revel in the scenery, though when the binoculars are put to the view, I see the inaccuracies of my distant impressions. In many ways, revelation—truth—is dispiriting. In other respects, seeing the world up close prompts one back to an idealized perspective; to the refuge of a masterpiece featuring the high art of food and drink in the company of witty, jovial friends delivering flawlessly, lines of an impromptu play.
In the art of life exists the meaning of life.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
