Love Has a Funny Way of Manifesting Itself

Many many years ago when I was much younger and much more trusting an old family friend gifted my parents a piece of art he called ‘a work of genius’. It was a 15” by 12” printed frame with the exact same pattern of coloured dots and petal shapes spread across its surface.

At first we assumed it was the detailing that was the genius part about it. But then, some weeks later that same friend called up to inquire about the artwork. When our answers – revolved around similar phrases of praise, he finally revealed to us that hidden within those dots and shapes was a figure of a dancing Krishna. And that the genius part was to spot that hidden figure within its incredible detailing.

None of us spotted it in the beginning. But over the years my parents have claimed to have seen the dancing Krishna once or twice whilst tilting the frame in a certain angle.

But me? Despite pondering and peering over it for days at an end I never did manage to see it. No matter how hard I tried, for me it always remained an empty frame without any hidden meaning to it.

Then one day after another failed attempt to find it, I just gave up and I stopped looking.

When I look back at my past, I feel like that artwork represented how I saw life especially when it came to my perceptions. When I gave up looking, it wasn’t just about failing to see the dancing Krishna, rather about failing to see the finer things in life: joy, love, enthusiasm.

And as I grew up the line that tethered me to trust that life is beautiful, frayed and frayed, until it finally snapped. I hadn’t just lost the ability to see the good in the world, but rather the belief that there was beauty worth looking for.

It took me a long time to come around and find any semblance of beauty or positivity. But ever since I adopted gratuity as a way of life – I’m inevitably reminded of that artwork again. Although this time, in a different way.

We all want everything to be right on the surface for the world to witness, like a mirror for us to believe it truly exists. But you see, just like the hidden Krishna, love has a way of manifesting itself in ways we can’t always see.

Just because it isn’t on the surface doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s always hidden in the details. By just looking at me you wouldn’t know it, but I have parents who try so hard just to protect me;  I have a friend who always keeps me in her prayers and a best friend never failed to wish me ‘good luck’ before each and every one of my treatment sessions.

There are so many more of these little details that I can’t completely enclose in this article – simply because I don’t always see them. And yet buried deep below the crevices of the surface where the regular eye can’t always reach – they still unwittingly exist.

It’s the small gestures and little things that go unseen; little shimmers of love manifesting in places we can’t always see.

And sometimes, it is these little things that we hold on to at our moment of need; these little things that bring us colossal amounts of joy. And sometimes all you need perseverance to see them. And like I mentioned in my previous post, perceiving gratitude is the only way to see it. Because through gratitude you can find love and it is through love, that you can ignite joy.

It is a coincidence that I wrote this during pandemic of Corona, even though I wasn’t really intending to. But guess what? It brought me back to my farmhouse in the mountains where the artwork still remains.

And maybe, I’m going to start looking for the dancing Krishna, again.