The Lightness of Being

I chose this painting for today’s blog post.

Its name is The Lightness of Being.

It feels almost strange that I haven’t mentioned it before.

And yet, it may be the one closest to me.

It has naturally found its place in our everyday life. My son has a mug with this motif and hardly ever puts it down. I have a large print at my workspace, so I see it every day. Not as something exceptional, but as a good companion of my day.

This painting came to me in summer. I don’t know exactly when or why. Perhaps because we were in the Czech Republic at the time, where swallows are everywhere. We love watching them. They are a true embodiment of lightness.

Precise, fast, and yet calm.

 

By their flight, you can sense when the air is changing, when rain or a storm is approaching.

Storms in the Czech Republic arrive differently than those in Iceland. Not so abruptly. Often you can feel them before you see them. The air gradually quiets, the light shifts, and swallows fly lower.

The storm may have the same strength, the same dynamic, but it usually lasts for a much shorter time. It comes, passes, and moves on again.

It leaves behind the scent of wet earth, a sense of release, the return of warmth. You can stand still with your feet in a warm puddle. Water quickly turns into steam and rises back to the sky, forming clouds — soft, fluffy, like lambs in a children’s book. The swallows return to their flight, and within moments, the world feels light again.

This painting is about precisely this lightness of being.

About moments when I feel good simply because I am.

When I play with my child with the same enthusiasm I had as a little girl.

When we run across a square among birds and people, without a destination, just because it’s fun.

When I splash my feet in a puddle.

When I taste a leaf from a roadside bush.

When my son and I engage in a muddy battle that takes hours to clean up — and I don’t mind at all.

When we stop by the road and step out just because something there is beautiful.

When we sit by the water and look into it, without words.

When we light a fire and toast bread.

When we listen to someone telling a story they truly lived — and we let it quietly unfold within us.

These are the moments when I return to myself.

When being here is enough.

When I am simply me — and it no longer matters how I appear to the outside world.

There is joy in it that is real.

Connection that needs no explanation.

Lightness that is being.

Like when swallows rise high enough to rest, for a moment, on an invisible swing between sky and earth. Just being there. In the sun, among the clouds. Everything else suddenly feels small and distant.

To loosen.

To let things be.

And to allow myself, at least for a moment, to feel that being here — right now — is completely enough.

 

Kate