On a Beautiful Day

Marlene Llanes’ On a Beautiful Day is a surrealist painting that examines some of the most ubiquitous questions of human existence and desires.

What lies at the root of our obsession with the heavens? Throughout history, is there a widespread rejection of the earth? Are we so unsatisfied with the rolling green hills, dense jungles and forests, endless oceans, pristine lakes, and the near-infinite other natural wonders of our home that we look to the sky in longing? I think not (but I could be wrong!). There are many reasons that we attribute such meaning to the sky and so little to the earth. I am not nearly intelligent enough to expose all of them, but a few seem clear.

One could argue that the unknown is always more attractive than the known, the familiar will never have the allure of the exotic, and I would agree with this assessment. However, in this case, why did our devotion to celestial enticement begin when the entirety of the earth was still as unfamiliar as the stars that hang over it? Perhaps we are not drawn to the unknown as much as we are drawn to the known unknown. This last statement sounds silly, but I cannot think of a more apt phrasing because what was unappealing about the foreign areas of the earth was the opposite of heaven’s mystery. Earthly exploration was dangerous and unpredictable, while the sky promised a perfectly structured ideal. The promise of a safe and harmonious afterlife above the clouds alleviated the fear-inspiring chaos of the earth. But, I can't entirely agree with this answer.

There is no question that we look up in search of a better life, but is it stability we crave or freedom? In an utterly violent and tumultuous world rife with inequalities, stability can seem freeing (and, often, still is). Ultimately, we want less control and not more (or more control of ourselves and less being controlled). We fear dying for nothing more than death itself, and the promise of an afterlife where no one will call upon us to die for them makes the pill of a wasted life easier to swallow. For most of history, and to varying degrees, to this very day, most people have had no agency in choosing their purpose or position. Meaning has been prescribed but not found; fulfillment has been promised in death but not in life. People have not craved the heavens because they hate life but because they have been denied all that makes life worth living.

If exploration of the earth did not entail violence (which, throughout history, it almost always has), it would never have been feared but embraced. For nearly everyone who has been the victim or the perpetrator of humanities' violent expansion, their dehumanization and self-dehumanization have been in service of others. The Roman generals, senators, and emperors came up with the idea of “civilizing” Gaul, not the soldiers. Still, invariably it was the soldiers who died and killed to realize the powerful few's ambitions. It is challenging to get so many people to sacrifice so much for so little without convincing them there is a broader purpose to their suffering. Sometimes people are told that strife will bring more prosperity and reason to their lives; other times, they are told it will benefit them in the afterlife, but they are always convinced that earthly suffering is unavoidable and necessary for eventual peace. This is why the sky has been such an effective mechanism of control.

It is easiest to burn the earth when one has been convinced that the world is compartmentalized into many different worlds, and burning the world of another is wholly separated from burning your own. However, it is difficult to see the earth on fire and accept it as paradise unless people are told to look elsewhere. The ground is opaque and too tied to the reality we flee to be successfully marketed as a promised land, but the sky is endless, bright, and otherworldly. So, we wish to climb On a Beautiful Day’s latter to the heavens instead of appreciating the beautiful day surrounding us. We look for what has already been found in fantasy. We hope for the liberty and peace that have been denied us on earth in the ether because a beautiful day is worthless if we can find no meaning in it.