“I believe in the absolute”, Justin said.
Justin got inspired to talk about his belief by a painting of an embryo I made. It was actually during my first exhibition that I met him. That embryo caught his attention. He said it looked as if it was already dead inside the womb. And he then carried on and said he believed that, as terrible as it sounds, if an embryo is dead already, there must be a reason for it. Maybe the death of the embryo is teaching us something.
It stirred something deep in him, and this is how he then started telling me about his belief.
“When a baby is born, it has its soul plan lined out already. Every pain it goes through, all of those things, are chosen. All that happens in your life makes sense. If someone causes you pain, it is because the person is there to teach you something that you have to learn.”
When I think critically about such philosophies, I get the idea that they are circular arguments. You go through pain because you have to learn something that you would not learn without going through that pain so you can avoid that pain. Why do you go through that pain in the first place? (You could just not encounter the pain.)
Are the banks of the river teaching the river how to flow? Or is it the river that carves the banks? What would be a river without banks? (It would be no river.)
Justin’s belief hangs in between two worlds. The world of the unwavering belief in an absolute entity, a purpose, something absolutely right, something able to discern what a person needs to learn and to discern how to teach this.
On the other hand, Justin’s belief is full of compassion for being alive. It is a compassion for the pain we go through.
I cannot bring it quite together with words, but, again, this is why we have the smallests. Justin’s smallest shows a golden line, a line and not a circle, because the way he put it, I am sure he doesn’t think it is circular reasoning. And that line absolutely divides black and white. And black and white are the absolutely brightest and darkest visual impressions we are capable of perceiving in this life. Maybe the golden line is the soul plan lined out for our lives carved into the light and dark of life, like the river carves and is carved into its banks.
