“Love life more than it means? Yes, of course.” ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
When I was a kid, there was a special moment in the evening when the old sodium lanterns on the street switched on, turning the world from a saturation to a yellow monochromatic color, and it always made me sad.
One such day, my father asked me why I was so quiet that evening. I wasn’t sure what to answer – how could he not feel the same way?
The evening has just begun, and the ditch outside is beginning to freeze. I looked through the window and saw clouds of people’s breath in the air.
“Let’s go to the village for an ice cream,” she said.
I sat on the back of his bicycle, and the yellow world was floating by. The street people had lost their color. The shop was almost closed, but we were just in time.
Moments later, we were standing outside the store, directly under one of those lanterns. My father was riding his bicycle in the snow, enjoying a sprinkle of ice cream.
“Laker is he?” He says (“Tasty, huh?”).
I was never sure, but it seemed as if in that moment, he wanted to say, “We’re both feeling this together, aren’t we?”
On being light-hearted
I’m thirty now, and it’s been ten years since I lost my father to cancer. In retrospect, growing up felt a lot like those evenings when the sodium lights were shining on the streets: over time, the world inevitably lost some of its color.
Broken hearts, bad decisions, dreams that will never come true, not speaking up, too late to speak up. More things to look back on, to be bitter about, or to get stuck somewhere along the way. Time leaves its mark in one way or another, and no one seems to escape it.
How do we cope with this fact of life? And how can one retain color, resist growing bitter, and be as light-hearted as a child? Is it even possible?
Growing up, I’ve seen people deal with it in different ways: clinging to careers, projecting it onto partners, turning to gurus, or simply going gray on their own. Others were intoxicated with the idea that with enough effort they could make a difference in this world.
I subscribed to the latter, promising myself to lighten up as I grew older.
In my twenties, I lost myself in philosophy, art, powerlifting, trading, travel, filmmaking and writing. I loved being busy, being nervous, staying up late, trying to learn new things, new ideas, new perspectives—anything to stop the restlessness. It seemed as if the pursuit of meaningful answers justified the meaninglessness of most of life’s suffering.
One of my former mentors at art school said to me one day, “Sam, being romantic is one of the hardest things you can do in this world.” I didn’t fully understand him at the time, but like most things he said, they only made sense years later.
Throughout my twenties, from the outside looking in, I did pretty well. But even in moments when life was truly good, the question remains unresolved: How can we remain light of heart while carrying the burden of a lingering past?
The more I searched, the bleaker the world seemed. It got me to the point where the sodium-lamp-feeling stopped being something that only happened in the evening and became something that was always there. The color of the morning did not return.
There came a point where I had completely exhausted the world I knew – or at least, it felt like it. Each answer I found made it a darker world than the last. And somewhere in that monochromatic stretch, a thought kept coming back—not exactly as a plan, but as a kind of reassurance: The door was there if I wanted it. That I can move away.
During that time I spoke to a woman who seemed light, full of color and always smiling. He had a tea box that didn’t contain red bush, mint or earl grey. Instead, he wants to eat Namaste, Empathy, Therapy etc. In fact, he forgot the original flavors, and we laughed and laughed and laughed.
We talked about a lot, and every time she responded with a smile, a joke, a funny face, never dismissing the weight of our conversation, but always choosing the light.
The steam from my teacup was slowly rising upwards. It is snowing outside. A young tree has started to bloom.
“Aren’t you a man who comes and goes, exploring as much as possible? If so, why not keep exploring? Sure, it won’t be a convenient lifestyle, but who cares?” she said
“You don’t care, do you?”
I then realized that in my search for answers, I stopped looking for questions.
unknown
The unknown is a child’s friend – until the child grows up and becomes his enemy, causing heartache and despair.
That despair drove me into the abyss, and in that abyss, I found that I had nothing to lose. And if I had nothing to lose, I could go anywhere and do anything.
The unknown that had become my enemy was suddenly the only place left that still breathed life.
So I went looking for it.
My love and I walked backwards across northern Spain for two months, literally backwards, on the Camino de Santiago, because we wanted to know what it really felt like to “embrace the unknown.” At first, we were constantly preparing for disaster because we couldn’t see where we were going.
But with enough slowness, nothing terrible happened. Instead, the unknown gradually stopped feeling like wariness and we found ourselves lighter, freer, and more present.
Then we left Amsterdam completely and moved to the Panama Campo, because we wanted to know what happens in real solitude, far from the confusing and familiar.
In that solitude, I found myself face to face with everything I was overcoming: an unwillingness to accept things as they were, a need to “be something” in a world that seemed bleak, and a frantic desire to make sense of it all.
Finding your ice cream
Getting to know my father through the stories of others, it turns out that he struggled with existence just like I did. I just didn’t see it. After all, he was the father: the one who knew everything and could fix anything.
But on that particular night, I think he knew what I was going through. And he didn’t try to fix it, explain it, or rationalize it into oblivion.
Instead, he got on his bike and took us to an ice cream shop.
I think about it a lot now – not about the ice cream, but about the ‘refusal to let monochrome win’.
He didn’t fight sodium lanterns or pretend the world wasn’t becoming colorless. He just decided that wasn’t reason enough to skip the vanilla with sprinkles.
The other evening, sitting in the sun with my love in Panama overlooking the heights of Vulcan Baru and the day slowly turning to night, I caught myself,
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I realized that at that moment, I was living in the same place where my father was. Not above the world, not against it, but within it, enjoying something beautiful, next to the one I love.
about Samuel Van Keeken
Samuel van Keeken is a Dutch writer, artist and filmmaker based in Panama, where he co-founded Same worldwide: A home for essays, artistic works, and retreats. At its heart is the same methodology, a framework for building existential courage and meaningful action in everyday life.
