Your distant gaze makes me wonder who you are. Your subtle smile, if not a smirk, makes me wonder if we have invaded your precious privacy for far too long. When decades become centuries and all else is not remembered how have you kept our attention for so long. Who are you Mona Lisa?
A lady who has graced the world's finest venues, she has wooed many over for years and she was no Queen. An Italian woman believed to be twenty four, married to a wealthy silk merchant has come into the thoughts of many thinkers. Few do not know her name; it is probably as popular as the painter she sat for. Or did she?
Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the great artists of the renaissance period brought us many wonderful pieces of art and the Mona Lisa, one of his most famous works, defines longevity. Why has she not been taken down and put away like so many other artifacts of our past? Why has she been protected and set apart? I suppose there are things that just make it through the cracks no matter what happens. No matter what weather these ideas or objects are faced with their magnificence makes them matter.
A few months ago I was visiting New Orleans; another place that against all odds has survived all that this world had to give it. A beautiful place, full of music and life, a place for harmony and smiles - set apart from any other place because of its pulse. There in the French Quarter I stayed in a hotel as beautiful as the day is long. The lobby sprawled across the front of the interior and in every nook and cranny with a surface sat a white potted gardenia. Each morning these gardenias would be exchanged for fresh replacements. Without a doubt I thought but did not speak: why are they doing this? Those still look so perfect. But even still I suppose it added to the luxury of the experience.
Undoubtedly everything has its time and its season. Papaw once wrote in a poem to my cousin Lyndsey: "How much do I love you?" To paraphrase his explanation he spoke of the amount of time and energy his love involved. Admitting that he would love her as long as his photo was hung up on the wall. He told her that he would continue to love when those same photos were taken down from the wall and put into some box or drawer, to be forgotten and misplaced. He would love her even though his "heart be still." He explained so eloquently that his love would last as long as she did and that it had began before she had ever arrived.
When the seasons change and those pictures of me and you are taken from the walls of our life and put into boxes. Just as the gardenias - replaced because of time. I am reminded that the Mona Lisa still hangs. Her face still gazes on crowds that come from far and wide to see here.
I love you Mona Lisa. I love the fact that you made it far beyond your years. I love you because your drawer never opened. Because somewhere sits a green house full of gardenias and a box full of pictures all sitting - maybe forgotten and maybe not. The simple idea that enters my mind is that the difficulty of our life should not be the attempt to not fade away. Much to the contrary. The difficulty of our life, or should I say our life's work…should be work that allows us to give the whole of our being to those that we love and cherish. As if to sit for a painting and expose our complete beauty and complexity. For lack of better words: we should pull out all the stops each day to make our lives worthy and useful. The goal not being to last forever but maybe that the fruits of your labors do last after we are gone.
Again, who are you Mona Lisa? How did you achieve this place in our world? How did you accomplish this Mr. Da Vinci? Whatever the answers are I am pleased with the results.
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