Looking.

On the Japanese island of Naoshima, several houses are converted to art installations of varying impact. Alone, I visited the island and did my best to check off each house as I eventually deciphered the map and winding streets from one art project to the next.

If I roll my eyes at “art” it is sometimes that which is most simple in execution that becomes most poignant over time.

One house required a line outside as it was pitch black inside. That is all we were told. As we entered, we were guided to an area to sit, as our eyes were consumed by nothingness. In the following moments as we sat and stared in front of us, a black screen appeared. To conclude the experience, the host said “it was always there.”

Ah, art.

That piece continued to resonate with me after I exited the house and over the following year. It is adulthood which is the dark room, yet you must look harder to see the light still there, as it always was.

I’ve struggled immensely with acknowledging that there is the part of life where one looks forward to things and then the part one looks backwards on experiences once had, and I’ve well past the age of looking forward to anything. But, I can still look, harder, at every moment. I can still find in the darkness there is light. In each passing year, I just need to keep looking into the pitch black until I see more than I thought there was, and be present in that moment without the need for anticipation or the bittersweet cognition of reminiscing life forever gone, buried into darkness with a flame of light scientifically impossible to rekindle.