July | 2022 | And Flow

“Why do many difficult situations happen to good [people]?” (Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations by Peter J. Anderson, page 2)

In On Providence, Seneca raises questions about hard things and answers with examples. Hard things apparently aren’t difficult: you’re just thinking about them wrong. These things are actually tests of endurance. Furthermore, these are actually necessary to become good and virtuous. Those who rise into the highest level of virtue become role models for others.

“A person can’t be a great role model without enduring misfortune.” (Anderson, 6)

Book knowledge does not produce virtue. One must perform actions of endurance through tough circumstances to gain virtue.

Seneca provides examples of role models who acted with virtue and endurance in the face of bad fortune. In fact, Fortune “used fire against Mucius, poverty against Fabricius, exile against Rutilius, torture against Regulus, poison against Socrates, and death against Cato.” (Anderson, 6). But all these people gained virtue through these tests.

According to Seneca, endurance tests are best when they are physical, rather than purely intellectual. Virtue comes through the pain of fire and torture, and the hunger from poverty and exile. But why? We could examine Seneca’s example of Socrates to discover more.

Socrates is known for his dialectic and rhetoric expertise. We imagine Socrates taking action by conversing with others, pressing them to examine their assumptions, and driving for truth. But Seneca highlights virtue through Socrates willingly drinking poison to uphold his beliefs after being convicted of treason. Socrates had the option to concede his beliefs, stay alive, and go into exile instead of drinking the poison. But, Socrates chose to uphold his beliefs and drink the poison. So, this physical act killed him. But instead of pitying Socrates for his misfortune and bad treatment, “we ought to envy him” because he endured the ultimate test of death, “happy and willing.” (Anderson, 6).

And maybe that’s the point: death. The best kind of endurance tests have a risk or guarantee of death.

It’s important to note that killing or hurting oneself for that sake alone is not virtuous. Pain for the sake of pain itself is not useful. Rather, fighting for something and facing a physical test with risk of death will produce growth along the path to virtue.

Boxers go through pain to break their bones so that the bones will grow back stronger. Hikers ascend higher and higher summits to maximize their potential and represent the best of humanity. The wounded soldier receives the highest military honor because they faced hardship. Socrates willingly drank the poison to show that “truth without life” is better than “life without truth.”

This reminds me of the Book of Job. Although this story is up to interpretation, one point is the inevitably of difficult things happening. We can react with rebellion or acceptance when tough tests happen. However, the best of us seek out these tests to grow into virtue. The question is: who is Job? Is he the force of rebellion or the force of acceptance in the face of difficulty?

Wow, did Georgia O’Keeffe handle her color!

We visited the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM. I highly recommend seeing it. The Museum was comprehensive and detailed, showing us layers of O’Keeffe beyond her paintings. For that reason, I feel like I know her as Georgia.

I was struck immediately by the nuance between Georgia’s gradients of color, attention to detail, and growth in artistic development over time. In the museum, we learned how Georgia began with formal art education in the early 1900s before breaking into abstraction. She attended to the small things, like the exact hues and shapes of simple objects like the center of a flower.

“Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow” by Georgia O’Keeffe (June, 2022)

She painted in New York City and met her partner there, but eventually left into nature at Lake George, New York. Then, she went further. She moved her life to beautiful, rural northern New Mexico. She had to experience the world at a slower pace – her own pace. Nature “speaks” to her.

As I gazed at the northern New Mexico landscapes, I was curious: how was Georgia a representation of pure American Modernism? She was capturing the wondrous landscape the local people saw every day. But, that’s the point: American Modernism, led by Georgia as its mother, aimed to show reality in an overly-industrialized era. Painting New Mexico flora, fauna, and daily life gave modern people a glimpse into a different reality outside the confines of busy Times Square or the four walls of a factory.

Natural beauty, and also Grant and Sahyli at Organ Mountains (June, 2022)

The previous week, we had driven south to Alamogordo and the White Sands National Park. During that three hour drive, we saw so many images Georgia could have painted. Natural beauty is commonplace here. We can thank Georgia for sharing it with the American people when we needed it most.

But she did more than share it: she connected our intimate, familiar relationship with nature to the divine – going beyond what exists toward what’s possible. This is where Georgia’s art shines. She had been painting the bones of animals in a way that brought them to life. She later evolved into gazing through the holes of pelvis bones and painting what she saw on the other side. She painted divine color schemes and shapes through the lens of the simple, wild beauty in front of her. These paintings are beautiful. They remind us that even the daily sunlight can be divine when viewed through the lens of “slow,” “compassion,” and “appreciation.”

She captured what sunlight should be: appreciated. She captured the shape of what “blue” would be if it were a shape.

The world enjoyed 98 great years of Georgia before she passed away in her home in New Mexico.

“Blue II” by Georgia O’Keeffe, and also some guy (June, 2022)

It’s nice when the story has a nice ending that wraps up. But, that’s rarely the case. Art mimics life, and life mimics art. So, both moves on. The way to subvert American Modernism is to subvert Georgia O’Keeffe and her art. One way to do this would be to pretend to paint a landscape that isn’t a landscape. Or represent the shape of “blue” but paint it “red.”

I have to respect my contentious to subvert such a great artist as Georgia. Because although we need to appreciate her work, we need to see it as foundational but not the end. We can always extend, expand, condense, abstract, or even subvert the great works of our time. We must. Because that’s what Georgia did.