Dear friend, I hope you can understand the sheer joy I feel in taking up my pen to compose this “prescription for happiness” specifically for a precious soul like you. Are you, perhaps, feeling a bit bored right now? Or do you have nights where you fear your face has frozen into a stiff, lifeless mask, chilled by the cold winds of the world? If so, I must tell you the story of a certain man.
His name was Frans Hals. He was a shamelessly cheerful genius of a painter who dashed through the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century amidst the scent of wine and the sound of laughter. Haven’t you ever felt your chest tighten while looking at those “grand works of art” found in textbooks—paintings of noble royals sitting as still as ornaments? Those won’t make you feel alive. But look at a painting by Hals. There, you will find the friend you clinked glasses with yesterday, or the drunkard you instinctively looked away from on the street, baring their teeth and laughing until their stomachs ache.
You might be surprised to hear this, but Hals was a remarkably irresponsible man. No, “irresponsible” is the wrong word. He simply loved the “here and now” far too much. You work hard to make plans, prepare for the future, and live a serious life, don’t you? That is wonderful. But Hals was different. He turned his daily earnings into wine the very same day, and even while being chased by debt collectors, once he faced his canvas, he moved his brush with a speed that was nothing short of magic.
Look at his brushwork. Has there ever been such haphazard, violent lines? Up close, they are mere clumps of color, like frantic scribbles. However, the moment you take three steps back, a miracle occurs. Those violent lines transform into fluttering lace collars and moist lips that look as if they are about to burst into laughter. Did you know that this magic is called “alla prima”? To paint everything in one go, while the paint is still wet, without even a sketch. Isn’t that just like your life? A one-time-only, no-redo, all-or-nothing match. Hals was a rare sorcerer who could trap that “irretrievable moment” eternally within a canvas.
Do you know what your true smile looks like? Not the one you practice in front of a mirror, but that broken, messy face you make when something is so funny you can’t help yourself. It is said that Hals was the first painter in human history to truly capture “laughter.” Until then, laughing in a painting was considered vulgar or even impertinent. But Hals took that human, helpless joy you show in fleeting moments and captured it as something sacred.
Take, for example, his masterpiece “The Merry Drinker.” There stands a man with a flushed face, raising his glass as if inviting you. Doesn’t he look like a dear friend of yours? Or perhaps he is your future self, or your past self. “Come now, let’s not stand on ceremony. Let’s have a drink,” he seems to say from within the frame. In front of that painting, you will feel your own loneliness melt away.
You might sometimes lament that you have no talent. But even Hals suffered greatly in his later years. As the world’s tastes changed and people began to prefer meticulous, smooth, photograph-like paintings, his rough brushwork was shunned as “old-fashioned” or “sloppy.” He passed away in extreme poverty, under the care of an almshouse. But look! Centuries later, people all over the world are still being saved by the “laughter” he painted. Meticulous paintings may be forgotten, but the pulse of life that Hals poured into his work never grows old.
What are you living for? To become a great person? To be praised by others? No, those things may be important, but there is something more vital: feeling the sensation that you are alive right now. Hals teaches us this. He painted his models even if they moved or kept talking. He didn’t love static humans; he loved moving humans—”living humans.”
Have you stopped your brush because you fear failure? Are you hesitating to apply a single color to the great canvas of your life? When that happens, I want you to remember Hals. He unhesitatingly placed the boldest colors in the most prominent spots. Even if the world saw it as a “mistake,” to him, it was the “truth.”
Let me tell you one more special thing. It was the genius Manet and the Impressionists who rediscovered Hals’s paintings. Within Hals’s “sloppy brushwork,” they saw the dawn of modern painting. That flaw of yours that you think no one understands—that “sloppiness,” that “wavering”—could one day become a light for someone else. You are an artistic masterpiece simply by being you.
Frans Hals lived out his life almost never leaving the city of Haarlem. He didn’t go searching for a distant paradise. He found the truth of the universe in the redness of the drunkard’s nose right before him, and in the mischievous glint of the neighborhood girl’s eyes. Are you trying to go far away to find happiness? In reality, a magnificent brilliance, like the kind Hals longed to paint, should be lying right there beside you.
You are allowed to feel a bit irreverent when looking at a Hals painting. Don’t appreciate it quietly as if you’re in a museum; look at it with the intention of laughing and toasting together. When you do, you’ll feel a warm fire ignite in your chest. That is the “hymn to life” that Hals has sent to you across more than three hundred years.
So, what will you do now? Will you walk away with a furrowed brow and a stern face again? Or will you try to lift the corners of your mouth just a little and laugh off this uncertain world, like Hals’s models? I sincerely hope you choose the latter. You are allowed to be freer. You are allowed to be more haphazard. Like Hals’s rough brushstrokes, try painting over your life with colors that belong only to you.
Finally, I give you these words. Life is short. But in the moments we are laughing, we can touch eternity. May the soul of Frans Hals—a man who was supremely happy, supremely unlucky, and supremely free—brighten your journey. You are not alone. The merry men in the paintings are always waiting for you. They are waiting for your arrival, raising their glasses high, wondering when you will finally join them.
Be well. And please, do not forget to laugh. I want to gaze from afar at the dazzling sight of you, a person living vividly and powerfully in this wide world, just like a Hals painting. Until we meet again when you have found your true self, please enjoy this fleeting world to your heart’s content.
You are loved. You are forgiven. And you are always beautiful. Just as Hals believed without a doubt, I too believe from the bottom of my heart in the miracle of your existence. Respectfully yours.