Shades of life

SHADES OF LIFE

Mario D’Couto

            It’s been quite a while since I have done pencil shading (which is something I enjoy) and the beauty of art is creating something out of nothing or doing something different than what one would expect to do, for instance, some people think of creativity as finding 10 new ways to use a pen stand or a sheet of paper and so on. It’s about thinking ‘out of the box’.

            However, the purpose of this article is not a discourse on creativity but is to drive home an analogy of art (painting and sketching to be precise) and life. A piece of art, as in a painting has a lot of different shades and if it were all the same colour, it would be a disaster. A good artist is one who knows how to combine the different colours and shades of colours to produce the desired effect. Skill is therefore very important in this regard.

            Sometime back I came across this story which goes thus. Once a daughter was whining away to her mother about how everything went wrong in her life. She was not doing well in her studies, her boyfriend broke up with her and her best friend is moving away. Meanwhile, her mother was baking a cake and asked her if she would like to have a snack. “Absolutely!” the daughter replies energetically.

            The mother then begins,

“Here, have some cooking oil.”
“Yuck!”
“How about a couple of raw eggs?”
“That’s gross, mom.”
“Would you like some flour or some baking soda instead?”
“Mom, are you crazy? You got to be joking.”

            It is here that the mother explains, “Yes, all these things seem bad by themselves but when they are put together in the right way, they make a wonderfully delicious cake.”

            God works the same way. Many times, we wonder why He would let us go through such bad and difficult times, but God knows that when He puts those things all in His order, they always work for the greater good. He is the divine artist who uses the different shades of life to make beautiful pictures and that is why we need to trust in His providence.


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