Art and Epiphanies
There’s this beautiful line in the movie II Postino, that reads, “Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it, but to those who need it the most.” I think it holds for every form of art. “Art doesn’t belong to those who create it, but to those who need it the most”; I keep regurgitating to myself and my lips curve into a smile.
What a beautiful thing art is! I can’t help but marvel at how art understands us when we struggle to understand ourselves; how it speaks to us. It pushes you into this maelstrom of emotions but also eventually gets you out of it. Life without art would be so drab, so meaningless. It breathes life into one’s humdrum existence.
They say that art is the language of the soul. I’ve realized that between the moments of epiphanies I’ve had to songs, poetry, prose, and even to scenes from TV shows and movies. This epiphanic aspect of art is the very reason why it is close to my heart. Isn’t it beautiful how art can evoke profound emotions and make you realize life-changing things that you wouldn’t have realized otherwise?
Rainer Rilke once said, “There are years that question and there are years that answer. So, until you find the answers, live your questions with all your heart.” Art, on multiple occasions, has helped me live the questions and helped me find the answers as well. So, here’s to art and the moments of epiphanies it brought with it!
- Slow down you crazy child!
I had heard this song called “Slow Down You Crazy Child” by Billy Joel before but it wasn’t until a few days ago that the lyrics struck chords with me.
“Slow down, you’re doin’ fine,
You can’t be everything you wanna be before your time”
There’s this weird obsession that college kids and 20-somethings have for hustling. We always want to do that next “big” thing. We want to be better than the rest. We want to win every accolade that life has to offer just now. We abhor ourselves if we can’t multitask, or aren’t ambitious enough, or if we can’t hustle enough. Of course, I was no exception to this.
I had a lot on my plate. I was dabbling with anything I could get my hands on, whether or not I wanted to do it. I was ablaze in a fire of ambitions that was slowly burning me out.
“You’re so ahead of yourself
That you forgot what you need”
What’s the hurry about? Do I have to do everything within these four years? I have been so hell-bent on achieving my grandiose goals that I’ve forgotten to slow down and appreciate the little things that make life equally worth living as achieving those goals would do.
“Slow down you crazy child…………………….
When will you realize Vienna waits for you?”
I finally took off my blinkers of ambitions which had been blinding me. Listening to this piece of art felt like taking a breather and realizing that life waits for you after all!
2. Ted Lasso (Season 1, ep. 02)
There are a plethora of Ted Lasso’s words that one should live by. But this one definitely takes the cake-
“You know what the happiest animal on Earth is? A goldfish! Because it’s got a 10 second memory!”
Making mistakes is inevitable and essential when you’re working on yourself. My cowardice from getting out of my comfort zone had a lot to do with the fact that I was afraid of making mistakes. But this particular scene from Ted Lasso, where Coach Lasso tells one of the players to be a goldfish, hit me like a mighty truck.
As I come back to this scene for the umpteenth time, I realize how important it is for one to carry the lessons that they’ve learned from their mistakes but to never dwell on them.
Here’s to navigating life’s ebbs and flows, the Lasso way because if the Lasso way is wrong, it’s hard to imagine being right!
3. Safarnama
‘Safarnama’ found me when I had been a battered traveler in this venture called life, who had had enough episodes of roads full of bumps and pitfalls. I always yearned for a savior who would lead the way and would navigate even the stormiest roads of my life for me. It was when I listened to this excerpt of the song that I found my savior-
“Jise dhoonda zamane mein, mujhi mein tha”
I found myself.
Oftentimes, we never trust our choices. We stay in this pit of self-loathing where we think we can’t do ourselves any good. We believe that there is someone out there who will get us out of this pit, someone who will give us all the love, care, and acceptance that we never deigned to give ourselves. We yearn for someone who we think will complete us, fill the void in our hearts, and get us out of harm’s way during every adversity of life. Little do we realize that the “someone” is ourselves. The very things that we’ve been seeking from the world are all nestled inside of us. It’s just that we haven’t looked deep enough. It’s just that we haven’t given ourselves a chance.
We’re all travelers writing our own Safarnamas(travelogue) as we sail through the choppy waters of life and attempt to climb life’s steepest mountains. The tantalizing glimpse of the shore is what makes us hopeful, the feeling of surmounting the peak is what gets us going. And if we look deep enough into ourselves, we’ll find everything we need to steer this ship to the shore even amidst a turbulent storm. We’ll find everything we need to surmount the peak, all within ourselves.
4. This is Us (Season 6, ep.16)
Petition to worship ‘This is Us’? Because this show is the crème de la crème of cinematic art.
‘This is Us’ is nestled in a very sacred place in my heart. The story is about unique triplets Kevin, Kate, and Randall, their struggles, and their parents. The beauty of ‘This is Us’ is that it breaks you down to build you back up. You’ll shed tears, lots of it. You’ll shed happy tears and sad tears. I’m finding it difficult to choose a particular scene from the show that has given me life-changing epiphanies because there are lots of them.
One such scene is when Randall and Kevin can’t muster enough courage to look straight into their ailing mother’s eyes because they can’t believe that their mother Rebecca, who was once this magnificent woman, is now frail and old and her Alzheimers is getting worse every passing day.
The cinematic brilliance of This is Us is beautifully shown in the scene that follows. As ‘To Build a Home’ starts playing in the background, we see young Rebecca tying up 8-year-old Kevin’s shoes, followed by a flash-forward scene where now Kevin ties up old Rebecca’s shoes and helps her get up. We get to see more of those time jumps now. We can see young Rebecca reading to her children, kissing her children goodnight, feeding them when they were toddlers, followed by yet another compelling flash-forward scene where her children do the same when she’s old. The time jumps are impeccable and so compelling that one can’t help but feel a lump in their throat.
Just a few days ago, my mother showed me a gray strand of her hair and said,
“Hera ta kapal fulna thalisakyo, ma ta budhi huna lagisake.”
(Translation: Look, my hair has started graying. I’ve become an old woman now)
I thought she was being unnecessarily fussy and I had told her, very easily and lightly, that growing old is inevitable. For me, she was going to be this magnificent woman forever. This scene shook me to the core. And now, as I unwind a hank of my overwhelming emotions about my parents getting old, my parents complaining about their graying hair doesn’t sound fussy anymore. I also realized how little time I’ve been spending with them. How I’ve been taking their presence for granted, albeit unknowingly.
This scene pushed me to spend more time with my parents and my loved ones, to make time for them, to make tons of little memories with them because before you know it, there will be no more of those memories to make.
