Lessons Learned from Monalisa
Life starts with a fetus and then it grows in the mother’s womb for 9 months and gets delivered as a baby. The baby becomes bigger and stronger with each passing day and one day goes out in the world to see what’s in store for him/her. Whatever happens to him/her is not important, the important thing is how he/she reacts to the events happening in his/her life. Life is a name of hardships, ups and downs, happiness, smiles, tears, wins and losses.
Monalisa painting is a 77 x 53 cm painting, housed in the Louvre Museum since 1503. It’s a masterpiece of Leonardo Da Vinci. Leonardo was fascinated by the way light falls on curved surfaces and the light and shadow to define 3 dimensional shapes. The gauzy veil, Mona Lisa’s hair, the luminescence of her skin was created with layers of transparent color, each only a few molecules thick, casting a glow on her face, and giving the painting a magical quality.
Mona lisa is a magical painting, the first time I saw the painting I was only 12 years old. I felt a little scared as I thought it was looking at me, wherever I went. So I didn’t think of it as awesome as our teacher was enthusiastically explaining it to be. This was my first encounter with the Mona Lisa. Then I took art as an elective in my college and there I was reintroduced to Mona lisa and this time I realised that the painting was a marvel of art. The thing that scared me as a 12 year old was actually the most studied feature of the painting. We have the perception that eyes staring straight out are looking at us, even if we are not directly in front of the painting. Leonardo’s mastery of shadows and lighting made the phenomenon more pronounced in the Mona Lisa.
Mona lisa’s smile is another engaging and mystical feature of the painting. There is a mystery to the smile. As we look at her she is smiling as we look away and back to the painting the smile seems different. If you look at the painting with a smile it smiles back at you. Whereas, if you look at the painting with a serious or bad mood, it won’t show you the smile. This is Leonardo, he studied the anatomy of human lips before painting the portrait, he hired people to play and sing for her, and jesters to keep her merry, so he could capture the true emotions of happiness. This is his wizardry, how he captured the emotion with the shadows and the light and dark strokes of his brush.
The painting taught me two important life lessons:
Life Lesson 1: When you smile at life it smiles back
When you keep smiling, life smiles back at you. Everyone smiles during good times, but only the brave at heart smile during the hard times. This reminds me of the bird living in my backyard. The bird made its nest in my backyard and since we were working from home due to the COVID-19 lock down, I was spending most of my time in the backyard, and I witnessed the bird spending its days in gathering the material for its nest. Then one day the nest was ready and the bird laid its eggs in the nest. The whole backyard was echoing with the chirps, as they were cheering for the successful completion and announcing for the new life on its way. After a week we had a bad sandstorm and their nest was blown away, everything gone, the nest, the eggs, the hope. It was devastating, but the next day, the bird was collecting and gathering sticks, grass and leaves for a new nest. The bird did not lose hope, it started off with a new beginning. I felt ashamed of myself, as I was being angry at not being able to go out of the house due to the lockdown and was feeling a little disappointed and edgy. The bird taught me to keep smiling and move forward in life. During the covid lockdown, the bird lost everything. Yet still, it made a new nest and laid eggs, and soon enough, the birds were chirping as loudly as they could because there was new life in the nest, a new hope.
Life Lesson 2: When you look at life with sadness it reciprocates
When you keep crying or cribbing about the things happening to you, you surround yourself with a circle of negativity. And once you enclose yourself in that circle, every judgement is blurred and you don’t believe in anything good because you can’t see beyond that circle. If you are not content with what you have, you will never find happiness in anything.
This is how monalisa taught me to embrace whatever life brings to you, if it is happiness take it happily, if it is hardship take it with patience and rest assured that good times are around the corner.