The Happy Lie in the Mirror
If you have picked up this text to distract yourself from the boredom of the moment, or perhaps to find some decisive salvation in your life, I must say you have made an excellent choice. To tell you the truth, I am wielding this pen solely for the sake of pleasing you. The world is overflowing with scholars who try to smoke people out with lofty logic, but I am different. I am composed entirely of a spirit of service—like someone surreptitiously tucking a sweet sugar candy into the gaps of your heart. When you happen to glance in the mirror, your face will look just a little more charming than it did yesterday. I shall now tell you plenty of stories that act like such a magic spell.
Flashy Dots and Quiet Solitude
Pardon the suddenness of the question, but are you familiar with a man named Roy Lichtenstein? He is the one who painted those festive, riotous pictures—taking fragments of comic strips, enlarging them onto giant canvases, and filling them with those peculiar dots. When you first saw his work, you might have snickered, thinking, “What is this? It’s just a comic book.” Or perhaps you felt a bit dizzy from the sheer vividness of the colors. However, it is precisely there that the truths of life, which we should read and look back upon over and over again, are hidden.
He dared to take fragments of cheap mass culture, which no one else would bother to look at, and house them in golden frames. This is nothing less than a powerful affirmation that your daily life, too, can become a first-rate work of art if you change your perspective. That moment when you wake up in the morning and sigh while looking in the mirror with sleepy eyes, thinking, “Ah, another mundane day begins.” If it were Lichtenstein, he would take that sigh of yours, turn it into a colorful speech bubble, and border it with a thick, bold outline. Your solitude, your boredom—all of it should be celebrated as a beautiful collection of dots.
How to Draw a Bold Outline Around Your Emotions
We live our daily lives driven by an unidentifiable anxiety. We struggle to please everyone, sell off today’s self-esteem for tomorrow’s bread, and eventually fall into a weary sleep. To you, I shall offer one piece of certain advice: draw a border around your emotions with a thick permanent marker.
When you are sad, do not merely be sad. Instead, embrace the realization that “you are currently playing the role of the most extravagant tragic heroine in the world,” and try to boldly enlarge that sadness. The women Lichtenstein draws, while shedding cartoonish tears, possess a certain dignified air. This is because their emotions are perfected as a “style.” Try placing the muddy troubles you carry onto a canvas and drawing a black line around them. When you do, strangely enough, they transform from monsters that torment you into “symbols” that you can observe and enjoy. To be objective is not to be cold and distant. It is to become a spectator in the best seat in the house, watching the work of art that is your life.
The Magic of Repeated Dots
Now, from here, I have a story that is a little mysterious yet very beneficial. Look closely at Lichtenstein’s paintings. There, a sequence of regular halftone dots, known as Ben-Day dots, continues endlessly. Up close, they are merely a row of dots, but from a distance, they create beautiful shadows and form the texture of soft skin.
Is your life not exactly the same? The small, trivial actions you took today. Brewing coffee, greeting someone, looking out the train window. Each of those might be a meaningless little dot. However, as those dots pile up and overlap, a unique story—the story of you—is woven together.
Please do not convince yourself that your life is stained because of one or two failures. That is simply a case where the color of a dot was a little too dark. If you look at the whole, that dark color should be an essential spice that gives depth to the work. When you look back at your past many times and are struck by regret, remember this: you are currently in the middle of production. No one knows what the finished painting will look like until the very last dot is placed.
Art in the Name of Service
The reason I am talking to you like this is a form of service. Art, in the end, may be a grand “lie” designed to cheer someone up. Just as Lichtenstein painted dots by hand to mimic mechanical printing, I, too, am appealing directly to your heart with a meticulously calculated rhythm.
As you read through my words, do you not feel your breathing steadying and the tension leaving your shoulders? That is because my writing is gently touching your subconscious. You no longer need to blame yourself. You, simply by existing, are already a completed piece of Pop Art. Flashy, noisy, yet somehow poignant. Who could possibly deny your individuality?
Do not let the common sense of the world or some unknown “correctness” distort your beautiful outlines. You are free to continue emitting vivid colors just as you are. Even if others call it “cheap,” if you love it, then it becomes the highest grade of truth.
Finally, to You Looking in the Mirror
This story is about to end, but there is one last thing I want you to promise me. Tomorrow, when you stand before the mirror again, stare intently at the light dwelling in your eyes. There, a magnificent universe unfolds—complex, profound, and optimistic—one that even Lichtenstein could not fully capture.
You are a being that deserves to be loved. The contradictions you hold, and the flaws you wish to hide, are all indispensable elements that constitute the masterpiece named “you.” I sincerely hope that after finishing this text, your world looks a little more vivid and a little more three-dimensional.
Now, lift your head and walk with long strides. The gallery called life is waiting anxiously today for its protagonist—you—to make an appearance. My overly service-oriented words give your back a gentle push. While imagining such a happy scene, I shall quietly set down my pen. For I am certain that you will read this over and over, finding a new smile each time.