There was an old
man who liked fine arts. He was collecting paintings his entire life, and he
finally acquired a formidable collection of portraits, landscapes, and still
life paintings. They were pleasing to the eye but not to the heart; that was
why the old man was dreaming of a painting that would fill in that gap.
Having saved enough
money, the old man ordered several artists to paint the picture. His chief
request was for the painting to cause feeling of peace and tranquility and make
the viewer’s heart warm and happy.
The artists set out
to create the pictures. Finally, all pictures were painted, and the old
connoisseur had a look on them. All the paintings were wonderful but only one
of them was exceptional.
The first painting
showed a magnificent and lofty northern landscape with blindingly white snow
that sparkled in the sunlight, the water’s edge appearing from beneath
turquoise ice, and silent seagulls high in the sky. The painting was as
glorious as the Snow Queen but as cold as her.
The second painting
was impressive for its resplendent colors: it showed flowers on a meadow high
in the Alps, with butterflies and dragonflies on them. This bucolic landscape
was shielded from all hurricanes and tempests by picturesque mountains, which
propped up an incredibly blue sky.
The picture was as
wonderful and as sickly-sweet as a lollipop candy.
The third artist
painted mountains, too, but those mountains were rocky and gloomy. Thunderbolts
were tearing up the turbulent sky, foreshadowing a thunderstorm. A mountain
creek poured down a steep mountain slope, raising dust where it fell. That
landscape could cause anxiety and nervousness, and the feeling of
defenselessness before the forces of nature but… if you looked at it closely,
you could see that there was a bush growing out of a split in the rock under a
small stone ledge near the waterfall. There was a bird’s nest on that bush. It
was there that the bird, undaunted by the natural forces, hatched its
nestlings.
The old man spotted
the little bird immediately (he was a real art lover, after all), and his heart
melted from tenderness. The peaceful bird in the midst of a tempest made
everyone who looked at the landscape feel protected and secure. The old man was
happy because he found what he had been looking for so long. The masterpiece
took up the vacant place in the center of his rich collection on that very day,
and his family and guests enjoyed it for many years.
Peace doesn’t mean
that everything around you is calm and quiet. Peace is in your heart.
Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds
CONVERSATION