There was once a painter who wandered through places where no paths have been written, in search of the perfect light.
One day, a ray broke through the clouds and spread like a fan across the distant hills. Beneath that light, everything came alive anew.
The painter was enraptured by that sky, but when he tried to paint it, the light went out.
He returned to the same place day after day. At the same hour and at the opposite one. Other lights came, but none like that one.
He dreamed of it, asleep and awake. Without the light, every landscape seemed bereft. He walked other roads, and still the light escaped him.
One of those days, the light showed itself among the trees. The painter pressed the shutter of his camera, but no machine could catch it.
He tried to paint it from memory. He saw it when he closed his eyes; when he opened them, the darkness undid his imagination.
The light was the source from which all things flowed, and it could not be fixed. It lay behind every tremor, hidden and visible at once. Beneath it, small things shone like jewels. Great things expanded into the infinite.
In his search, the painter left his home far behind and saw the most beautiful landscapes. He crossed deserts, seas, and jungles. Everywhere the light was different and the same. He passed through vast cities and saw it reflected in the eyes of those who lived there. He climbed the highest mountains, but the light dwelt higher still.
How much the painter saw! Under the light’s guidance, no harm could befall him. Sometimes he would sigh:
“If only I could capture it with my brushes, I would have the most beautiful painting in the world.”
And so the years passed, and his hair turned white. His back grew stooped, his hand began to tremble. Yet his paintings, day by day, grew more luminous.
Then one day his sight clouded, and he could see no more. Everyone sought to console him, not knowing that the painter carried in his memory as many landscapes as days he had lived. And in every one of them the light was present.
He no longer had to pursue it. The light was with him always. It was enough to sit quietly beneath the open air of each new day.
And so it was that the painter reached the light, and never lost it again.