Immortal Journeys to leave behind the fleeting moments of absurdities in life: Rembrandt and his painting The prodigal son in the Tavern

When you see this painting, may be your eyes see the happiness in this couple in his wife Saskia and Rembrandt himself. A fleeting moment captured in a painting because there were no photographs back then in the 17th century. What followed in coming years in Rembrandt's life is equally harrowing as iopposite to the painting which is a jubilant one filled with celebration. It is said this painting was done by Rembrandt at a time in around 1636 when the young Rembrandt now was getting recognition as a great painter in the Netherlands. He had just married a fine wife to himself in Saskia. The glory of their outwardly prosperous life and inwardly happy and blissful reunion is reflected in this painting. They are celebrating their beautiful life with Rembrandt a drinking glass full of life probably on his hand.

By 1642 however, he had lost his three children and his wife, Saskia died by the age of 29. She has been glorified in his other portrait paintings as well, meaning he loved her and was a central part of his blissful, prosperous life. I just recently had a kid and it was a pretty scary moment both for the mother and child with whom I stayed in the hospital for 13 days fearing I might lose one or both of them and I can partially understand the heartache Rembrandt might have felt in the next decade of his life, losing his children and his beloved wife whom he has immortalized in many paintings.

I can already understand, how life might have felt meaningless, nihilistic and filled with absurdities, and the nausea of not having any knowledge or understanding about what to do with one's existence now that you have lost it all that your inner life was filled with even though his outer life was flourishing and his paintings getting immortality status even back then 400 years ago.

It is one the reasons, we here at Voyageride exist, to provide meaning and sense to our friends in an absurd life that we all inherit since birth. It makes no sense and we don't know what to make of it, how to make a point, how to have hope and how to have some meaning in the face of various absurdities like this in our life. We believe that we can help our friends realize that these moments of absurdities unexplainable to us humans and all living creatures; they are but just fleeting moments that if realized are fleeting can be let go and people can still move on, realize the strength within themselves so that they can have meaning and with it achieve immortality. It is what Rembrandt must have done after losing his entire world in wife and children to who knows what diseases and infant mortality which must have been high back then. He gathered strength, he took some introspection in the natural places of Netherlands, poured his heart out into his paintings which became immortal one after another even today four hundred years later. He found the fleeting nature of life's absurdities and moved on to paint and also start his family again, and then became immortal through a clear existential nihilism which engulfs us all human beings, one time or another. Ride the journey, voyageride.