The Ones Still Looking

There’s a story about Van Gogh, (whether or not it happened exactly this way, it lives in the spirit of his letters) that someone once asked whether he believed God had given him the gift of painting. He said yes, most definitely, and that it was the only gift he was given. He painted, he said, because it stopped him from thinking.

 It’s a strange and beautiful answer. 

We imagine a gift as something that lifts us up, that makes us more. But Van Gogh describes his as something that quiets him down, that makes him, for a few hours, blessedly less. The gift was not the brilliance. It was the silence the brilliance bought him.

 Not everyone has a thing like that. Many of us move through life without ever finding the one activity that turns the noise off. We try things, and underneath it a quiet voice keeps asking: is this it? Is this the thing? When the answer is no, we set out again. We are forever packing for a destination we never seem to reach.

 And yet even Van Gogh, who had his gift, did not find peace. The painting stopped the thinking, but only while the brush was moving. The road didn’t end for him; he simply had something to do on it. A gift isn’t a place where the searching stops. It’s something that makes the searching bearable.

So perhaps the real question isn’t what is my gift, but what, even now, gives me an hour of quiet. It might be walking, or cooking, or fixing something with your hands. These are small mercies, and they are not lesser for being small.

If you’re still looking, you’re not behind. You’re doing the most human thing there is. And the peace you’re after may not be waiting at the end of the road like a reward. It may already be travelling beside you, in the moments you forget yourself, briefly, and simply do the next thing.

M.