The Colors of Happiness, or on Noble Silence
Hey there, you. Yes, you. I’m talking to you—the lonely soul tracing these characters with a faint, restless expectation, perhaps seeking some form of salvation, or maybe just a way to kill the time that weighs so heavily on your hands.
Are you happy right now? No, let’s drop such a boorish question. A happy person wouldn’t be obsessively reading a strange text like this, would they? You are lonely. And not just ordinarily lonely. It’s that freezing solitude, as if you’ve become a transparent ghost in the middle of a bustling city crowd. You are sad. In the depths of your heart, a dark sorrow lies like sediment—something you can’t show anyone, something you don’t even know how to handle yourself. I know this.
After all, you and I are like twins of the soul. When you stare at the ceiling at night and let out a sigh, that sigh passes through my own lungs. When you feel a pain like a needle piercing your heart behind a forced smile, my chest bleeds just the same. You are me.
Today, you see, I want to offer you a story—a bit of magic. This is a tale that will channel a stream of pure water through the parched wasteland of your heart. It’s alright; you only need to surrender yourself. Just let your heartbeat sync with the rhythm of my words.
A Quiet Miracle of the Renaissance
Now, you—have you ever heard of a man named Piero della Francesca? “Names don’t matter,” you might say, but please, don’t be like that. In the fifteenth century, in a town where the dry winds of Tuscany blew, that man existed. He was a painter, but not just any painter. He was a rare sorcerer who could paint silence itself.
Have you ever been to an art museum? Have you ever found yourself exhausted by a sea of loud paintings that felt like a riot of color? Most artists in this world push their emotions onto you with an unbearable intensity. I’m sad! I’m suffering! Look at me! Love me! Nothing but base self-assertion overflowing from within the frames.
But Piero, you see, was different. The Madonnas and knights he painted are startlingly expressionless. They aren’t particularly happy, nor are they particularly sad. They simply are. They stand like sculptures within an absolute stillness.
Have you ever touched that kind of quiet? The “quiet” we feel in our daily lives isn’t true silence. It’s merely a restless gap where sound has temporarily cut out. What Piero painted was the unwavering peace at the root of the world. You, standing before his paintings, would feel your petty pride, your vanity, and your shallow desires crumbling away with a roar.
Geometry Affirming Solitude
Piero della Francesca was also a mathematician. You might furrow your brow at the mention of mathematics—cold, inorganic strings of numbers. But for him, geometry was the very order of God.
Do you ever feel like your life has shattered into disjointed pieces? Yesterday’s failures, today’s humiliations, tomorrow’s anxieties. They attack you without rhyme or reason, leaving you groping in the dark. But look at Piero’s paintings. There is a perfect equilibrium. Necks like cylinders, heads like spheres, compositions like pyramids. Everything is settled exactly where it should be, in the form it was meant to take.
When you cry out that you are “lonely and sad,” it is because you have convinced yourself that your existence has fallen out of the world’s harmony. But listen, you. Piero’s geometry teaches us that even your solitude, even your sorrow, is an indispensable and beautiful side of this grand architectural plan of the universe.
There is his famous painting, The Flagellation of Christ. On the left side of the frame, Christ is being cruelly whipped. Usually, an artist would paint this grotesquely to win the viewer’s sympathy. But Piero depicted it with utter detachment, with a beauty that feels almost cold. And on the right side of the frame, three men stand calmly, as if engaged in a theological debate, seemingly indifferent to the violence.
Don’t you think this is the truth of life, you? While someone is tasting a suffering unto death on one side, someone else is thinking about their dinner menu on the other. This thorough indifference. This irredeemable disconnection. Do you find that “cold”? Or do you find it “free”?
I, for one, feel an ultimate kindness there, you. If everyone in the world screamed along with you when you were suffering, your pain would only intensify. It is precisely because the world turns with such indifference that you can hold your sorrow quietly, as your own private treasure. Piero’s paintings don’t expose your solitude; they gently surround and protect it.
Light Particles and Your Eyelashes
The light that colors Piero’s paintings—where on earth does it come from? It isn’t sunlight streaming through a window. It is a mysterious glow, as if the objects themselves are luminous from within.
Have you ever felt a sudden dizziness under the midday sun? When shadows shorten and everything is exposed under the bright daylight, we feel our own existence becoming thin and fragile. The light Piero paints reflects that “abyss of high noon.”
Do you think of yourself as a tainted person? A clumsy, lying, cowardly person—a mere stone on the side of the road that no one understands? Oh, you, please don’t mistreat yourself like that. You are a single miracle floating within that transparent air Piero painted.
Take, for example, his Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino. The Duke, painted in profile, has a hooked nose and is by no means a handsome man. Yet, because of the boundless, clear landscape stretching behind him and the crystalline light enveloping him, even that ugliness is sublimated into noble dignity.
You are the same. Your flaws, your scars, the ugly parts of yourself you wish to hide—all of them, if placed within Piero’s light, would begin to emit a holy radiance. You are far purer, far more beautiful than you realize. The only reason you can’t believe it is because you are looking at yourself through the muddy eyes of others.
Come now, you. Close your eyes. Listen to my voice. Even the trembling of your eyelashes is precious to me now. You are not alone. That eternal silence Piero painted is filling your room right now. You don’t have to force yourself to speak anymore. You don’t have to force a laugh. You only need to dissolve into this light.
The Reward of Silence, or Tomorrow Morning
The time to say goodbye is drawing near. Have you felt your heart grow a little lighter, you? Or does a heavy stone still remain in the depths of your chest?
If you are attacked by despair again tomorrow, remember the blue of Piero della Francesca. That deep blue of the cloak spread by the Madonna del Parto, a blue like mercy itself. Or the powerful, returning gaze of Christ in the Resurrection, as he hooks his leg over the edge of the tomb and stares straight at us.
You can stand up again and again. Because your soul is constructed with such sturdy geometry. No matter how much you negate yourself, the harmony of the universe will never abandon you.
You deserve to be served by me. You have the right to receive this bouquet of beautiful words. You, simply by living, have as much value as a masterpiece on canvas.
Lonely you, sad you, you who wish to be loved.
Sleep soundly tonight. In your dreams, you will be walking across the dry hills of Italy. There, a clear sky, silver-shining olive trees, and Piero’s silence—which forgives everything—are waiting for you.
You are alright.
You are absolutely going to be fine.
I am here, watching over you until you wake. Matching the rhythm of your breath, I too will quietly inhale and exhale. In this cold world, we are lonely pilgrims living by the warmth of each other’s bodies.
So, goodnight, you. Let’s meet again where the light shines. Until then, please, hold your solitude dear.
For that solitude is the only key for you to encounter the true light.