The Painting (short story)

[Adam M]

The Painting

 

by Adam M

 

There is a painting so big that you can't see the edges if you stand closely enough. It was painted by the most masterful painters who have ever lived. DaVinci worked on it, Michaelangelo worked on it, Picasso.  The painting contains the most beautiful trees, roads, rivers, boats, and animals. It is so magnificent that it has the power to make you laugh and cry and want to scream at the top of your lungs. You can feel the love and attention to detail that went into the painting if you look at it with enough care. All you have to do is look at the painting with great concentration and attention, and you will be rewarded with splendid revelations that fill up your heart with love and your mind with all the answers to all the questions that you never even knew you had.

 

There was a young boy who had looked at the painting as often as he could. He felt as if he had been looking at the painting since the day he was born and he loved to marvel at its beauty and its mystery. He loved the painting so much that his favourite parts of the painting had etched themselves into his young mind and he would think about them often. As he looked at the painting every day, he was amazed at how vast it was and how it must have taken a very long time to paint. He would discover new areas of the painting that he had never seen before and he would feel a pure sense of wonder and awe whenever he explored the vast painting with his eyes and his imagination.

 

As the boy got older, he wanted to learn everything there was to know about the painting so he asked his parents to buy him books  that would teach him about the history of the painting, who painted it, and why it was painted. He spent so much time learning about the painting that sometimes he forgot to look at it. Now, when he looked at the painting, he saw within it all the things that he had learned about it.

 

The boy would always talk with his parents about how much he loved the painting. He told his Dad all of the amazing things that he had learned about the painting and he convinced him to sit and look at the painting with him. As the boy's father looked at the painting, he felt a spark within him that could have rekindled an old flame if the wood had not been neglected and dampened.

 

"I love looking at this painting with you, son," said the Dad, "I used to look at it too when I was your age. But I cannot help but feel that I am wasting my valuable time just sitting here and staring at the same painting that I know so well. I know that you love it, but I am a very busy man and I have lots of work do to."

 

"Dad!" exclaimed the boy, trying to hold his father's fleeting attention, "everything you could ever need is already within the painting! All you have to do is have faith that you will find it if you just look closer."

 

"I do have faith, son." said the Dad, "but I cannot help but feel restless when I stare at this painting for so long…My mind is used to moving quickly and it is difficult for me to look at it for so long, especially when you are not around to remind me of the painting's hidden beauty."

 

The boy sighed, they had had this talk many times before and he knew that it was no use trying to convince his Dad to invest so much time and energy to reap the rewards that the painting would inevitably give him if he stared at it for long enough.

 

"You see son, I have a voice in my head that does everything in its power to remind me of all the other impotant things that I could be doing instead of wasting my days gazing at this pointless painting. I only have so many years left and I don't want to see them go to waste! Now, I'm sure that this painting contains many deep secrets, like you tell me all the time, but I must finish my work so that I can begin packing for our family vacation." The boy's father left and that was that.

 

The boy was sad that his father would never appreciate the beauty of the painting in the same way that he did. The boy spent all of his time bathing in the glory of this magnificent painting and the more closely he paid attention to the painting, the more divine love filled the boy's heart and soul, the more he wished that he could share the love with his father.

 

Sometimes, the boy would get distracted by other things and he would forget about the painting for hours and sometimes days at a time. He noticed that the more time he spent away from the painting, the more things seemed to go wrong in his life. The voice in the boy's head had gotten more clever and more convincing as he got older. The voice would try to tell him that he had outgrown the painting and that he did not need to think about it anymore so that he could focus on the more important things in life.

 

The boy had not thought about the painting for an entire year and he could not have been more miserable. He was buried up to his ears in work and he felt that he had no time left to do the things that he truly wanted to do. He felt depressed and he wished that things could be different.

 

Then, on his way home from work, the boy saw a small, framed painting in the window of an antique shop and it reminded him of the immense beauty of the painting that he had forgotten. All of the boy's childhood memories suddenly rushed back to him and filled him with inspiration to quit his job and devote all of his time to studying the divine painting from his childhood. He sat in front of it for days and sometimes he forgot to eat because he was so enthralled by the painting's mysteries that he had yet to discover. Slowly, a sense of joy had returned to fill the boy's heart that his work had drained out of him.

 

The voice in the boy's head fabricated one thousand and one reasons why the boy should stop looking at the painting. The voice showed him visions of poor and dirty men sleeping on the street because they had ignored their important work. The voice tempted the boy with false promises of true love and pleasure that the boy just couldn't get by sitting and looking at the painting. It even told the boy that his father would be disappointed in him if he wasted his entire life looking at the "pointless" painting.

 

Luckily, the boy would not make the same mistake twice and he would not be seduced by of the voice's empty promises nor would he be scared by its empty threats. The boy already knew what he had to do. He had to sit and observe. He had to observe the painting in an attempt to comprehend its full glory. It was a difficult task since the painting was so vast and detailed. The voice tried to make the boy doubt himself by reminding him how the painting is too complex for one little mind to understand.

 

But still, the boy sat, unmoved.

 

And he observed.

 

The shapes in the painting subtly began to blur together. The trees would blend into the ground just as the ground blended into the sky. The boy noticed that the tree was not really a tree…it was just paint, but the voice called it a tree in an effort to distract the boy from the Truth. But the boy could no longer see the tree as a tree, he just saw it as paint because that's what it was, just like every other object in the painting.

 

That's when the boy looked at his hands and noticed something very peculiar about them. They were made of the same thing that the trees were made of…paint.

 

The voice cried out in agony and harnessed all of its convincing power in a desperate attempt to distract the boy.

 

But the boy was not listening to the voice because he already knew what it was…paint.

 

And just like that the voice was gone and so was the painting and so was the boy; the only thing that was left was the paint.

 

The paint was always there and always will be there. Everything that ever existed, exists, and will exist was, is, and always will be made of the paint. Even DaVinci, Michaelangelo, and Picasso are made of the paint. You may ask, why is there any paint at all? There isn't. You see, when literally everything is just paint there is no paint. And that's the way it always was and always will be.

 

. . .

 

 

The boy continued to sit in the painting just as he had his entire life, but now, we was fully concious of it. It felt very natural and he knew that it couldn't be any other way. The reason why he had been so mesmerized by the painting from such a young age was because the painting would never stay the same. Unlike every other painting, this painting was contantly moving and changing, the only thing that stayed the same was the paint.

 

The boy was now free to enjoy the rest of his passing life without any worry or fear of death. He knew that his body was just paint and that it would eventually blend into the rest of the painting just like everything else. Everything just felt…right. As he sat there in bliss, he became concious of a burning desire within him to share his discovery with his father. The boy knew that his father wouldn't believe him. How could he? "Hey Dad! Everything is made of paint!" His Dad would laugh at him. The boy sat there and began to think of some clever ways that he could tell his Dad about his discovery that had always been true. Perhaps he would use a metaphor or something…

 

The end.

 

 

 

 

I hope you liked it! What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Kserkkj]

@Adam M BEAUTIFUL!!! What A Masterpiece Story. 

[Adam M]

@Kserkkj wow ! thank you so much! it just "came to me" last night LOL

[sarapr]

@Adam M I enjoyed it very much reminded me of a lot of things all together made me go entirely different places all at once.