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Although we’ve all learnt over the past few years how unpredictable life can be, there’s something about a new year that makes us reflect on the experiences we’ve had and choices we’ve made over the past 12 months. It seems like the moment to begin again should we feel the pull to do something different in our lives.
Normally we think of setting resolutions, a tradition whose origins can apparently be dated back to 2000BCE and the ancient Babylonians, who celebrated their new year during a spring festival. Unlike today’s more personal resolutions, those early commitments were made as promises to deities and were about paying off debts and returning borrowed items to their rightful owners.
Personally, I stopped making resolutions a long time ago. It felt too much like self-inflicted pressure, setting myself up for mini-failures that I could do without. Instead, what I have done repeatedly in the recent past is to pick one word I’d like to explore more and dwell on throughout the course of the year. It’s a practice that gives me room to think about multiple areas of my life. Some words I’ve allowed myself to swim in over years past have included “courage” and “reclaim”.
This time around, I’ve found myself thinking about the word “treasure”. I’ve felt moved to reflect on what it is that I consider to be of great worth, whether that be things, people, ideologies or ways of living. Treasure is such a rich and storied word and not one that I imagine many of us use when we talk about our lives. But let’s take this word and look at it from all sides: what in our lives do we consider a treasure, and how does an acknowledgment of that affect how we might live?
In the 1896 painting “Pandora”, by English painter John William Waterhouse, the scene is the rocky bank of a small natural pool in the middle of dark woodland. A pale young woman wearing a sheer blue dress is kneeling before a massive rock, upon which lies a golden chest. Her feet are bare, and her dress is slipping off her shoulder revealing the small curve of a breast. There’s something youthful and seductively careless about her.
She is accessing something that seems from the outside to be desirable and full of value — but she’ll discover the fateful truth when she opens it up. As she peeks in, a small puff of smoke escapes from the side of the chest. This is Pandora, the first woman on Earth, according to Greek mythology, who opens the infamous box and releases a host of worldly ills.
The contents of Pandora’s box wouldn’t constitute a treasure — yet perhaps the story tells us something about the nature of desire. It’s a challenge to consider if there are things, or ways of being, upon which we have placed significant value but that have not brought as much joy or hope into our lives as expected. We’re so used to thinking about treasure as something to be guarded, something to be hoarded or kept for our own gain and away from others. But our reappraisal of the word might include the more beautiful idea of treasure as something that causes our life to expand, and even spill into the lives of others, because of our flourishing.
While researching paintings of alchemists, I was struck by the different ways they were portrayed. In the proliferation of paintings on the theme from the 17th and 18th century, they were frequently depicted as poor fools wasting their time while incurring debt, often with a wife weeping in the background. Sometimes the alchemist was an old, bearded man burrowed in a messy candlelit room surrounded by open books, or working diligently over tubes and potions in a room strewn with pots and vials and fallen bottles, assistants scurrying about. Either way, these men had spent a lifetime in search of an as yet unobtained treasure.
The 17th-century Dutch painter Thomas Wijck painted scenes featuring alchemists at least 40 times. He tended to focus less on the eccentric or foolhardy aspects of their pursuit. In one undated painting, “An Alchemist”, Wijck depicts a man draped in loose clothing and a cloak, holding a pair of scales. The room is a mess, filled with open books and things strewn about. A young assistant sneaks a look at the focused alchemist. Whatever the man is searching for, his concentration suggests it is a worthwhile, even noble pursuit.
I’m drawn to the idea of a treasure that is valuable not just for its material properties but also because of the process that brings it into being. In my own life I think about writing, the challenge of it, and yet one in which process is often just as valuable as the end result. Sometimes more so, because I discover so much in the work of wrestling my thoughts into something tangible. I think also of how deeply I treasure the process of a person slowly becoming an invaluable part of my life.
I love the quiet but powerful 1894 image “Journey of the Magi” by French painter James Tissot. Three bearded men dressed in white, yellow and gold robes sit astride camels at the front of a long entourage winding behind them deep into the majestic mountainous landscape. The caravan seems to be walking directly into the viewer’s presence, with the animals and desert just as much characters in Tissot’s painting as the magi. And yet I love that the magi are painted with such a sense of their own majesty.
The work is based on the story of the three astrologer-priests who travel to meet the infant child Jesus. In the context of the well-known narrative, one naturally assumes that the baby is the treasure. Or even the gold, frankincense and myrrh they reportedly bring.
But as I think about this group of people choosing to set off on an unpredictable journey, I can’t help but wonder if the thing to be treasured is also the courage, openness and willingness to embrace the different paths that might open up in one’s life, even if it means potential change. There are so many ways to consider what exactly it is we treasure, and how we should focus our efforts in pursuit of it. But perhaps, as we look to the year ahead, we should make more space to think about the treasure to be found in the everyday ways we approach our lives.
Enuma Okoro is a New York-based writer for FT Life & Arts [email protected]
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