Reason # 23 The English version

 

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Brushstrokes on the Canvas: A Reflection at Sixty

I know now: this blog is an immense task.
And yet, I will continue the undertaking — courageously.
My promise is my promise, and I’ve always liked to think of myself as a man of my word. I don’t like to break that.

But I also know now that I will never truly be able to do justice to my life in this “broad strokes painting.”
Not because I think I’m particularly “special” or “exciting,” but because each of our lives is such an enormous, intricate, and beautiful life-sized painting. The challenge lies in how we unpack and interpret those colours — how we dissect the brushwork of our own existence.

Right at the start, I said: this is not to impress or brag.
This isn’t an “Oh-look-at-me” kind of thing. No!
This is a humble attempt to do justice to a life I’ve come to see as one long, continuous blessing — yes, interwoven with sadness, but that’s how texture and depth work.
The beauty lies in the contrast — alternating shades and nuance, shadow and light, dawn and dusk, laughter and lament.

Yesterday, the impossibility of the task finally dawned on me as I leafed through my boxes of old photographs — some freed from their dusty hiding places for the first time in decades.
And yet, miraculously, they survived.
Some are over sixty years old, and they’ve made nearly sixty moves with me — now resting safely in my little forest cottage.

When I laid eyes and fingers on them again, I fell silent — deeply silent — in reverence.
Before me, a living picture took shape.
There they were again: my childhood, school days, varsity, army, family, friends, first jobs, a wedding, my children’s baby photos.

Who is that beautiful young dad staring back at me?
I used to think I was unattractive…
Look how radiant the woman I married was.
Could those joyful, glowing children really be ours?

Who is that proud young man laughing so freely?
Where did that deep, sincere laughter go?
Look at the hope, the faith, the love in his eyes — that man believed he could do anything.

And truly, life has played along.
It has given me so much — so deeply, so intimately, so abundantly.
Blessing upon blessing, grace upon grace.
Even the darkest memories now seem lit from within — touched by a light that reveals their purpose.
The Source brought sunshine to everything — even the cloudy days.

Yes, I originally wanted this 60Blog to document my life in some way.
So that those looking in from the outside might see: This was (and is) Ernest.
But now I understand — the task is too big.

All I can do is fling a few colours onto the canvas, like splashes —
and let those who come visiting in this cyber-room draw their own meanings, form their own pictures, make their own deductions.

After all, I am — first and foremost — a poet.
And we poets know how to suggest with words,
and then wait in silence, eagerly, for the interpretations.
Because it is in that interpretations that our words find their afterlife – a second life so to speak!

Beauty, my friends,
will always live in the eye of the beholder —
just as love lives in the heart of the lover.

So today, I will simply post a few little snapshots —
to sketch a picture for us all. Let’s have a look and see…

…that it was good.

(As always, I will translate this piece for my English friends — but I’ll leave the original version here too, in the language I grew up in: the language of my heart and home, not merely of my intellect.)