Longing..no more

In Oct’23, I was on a holiday in Lisbon (Portugal) and had enrolled for a Street Art Tour when I saw this gorgeous wall mural painted by Mário Belém. The tour guide was extremely passionate about Lisbon, the Portuguese history and art. Thanks to him I was able to explore some amazing street art. With this mural I officially start by blogging journey, more artworks to follow of course. Hope you like what you read 🙂

When I first set my eyes on the mural, my initial thought was how beautifully the flowers and leaves were painted – especially the blueish leaves. Even though blue being an unconventional color choice somehow was making sense. The longer I stood in front of the mural I observed how the woman is facing in, with her back to us i.e. to the outside world. It seemed like the artist was trying to tell us something.

The literal translation of the Portuguese word “Saudade” in the painting is Longing. When I asked the tour guide to elaborate more on this word and its meaning, he said it means yearning or feeling of incompleteness. It was so heartbreakingly beautiful. The tour guide then went on to explain that the artist had conceptualized the idea during lockdown to reflect how we spend most of our time with our backs to the world and over-index on past experiences. It symbolizes how the lockdown gave us all time to introspect.

Longing for past experiences or desiring for things we believe are missing from our lives or just waiting for things to get better is human. We all look back to our experiences from the past and our life before “that event” – that life altering event. But constantly deliberating on the past consumes us to the extent that we forget we are supposed to live in the present and not in the past. We forget that we are supposed to give ourselves room to live and breathe new experiences.

Lockdown forced us all to slow down- gave us time to think. For me, it brought a realization that I want to move closer to my family – there is no guarantee of how much time we have with each other or on this planet. Yes, looking back is important so that we don’t make the mistakes again and instead we do better, but we cant allow the past to define our present – this is where most of us fumble, at least I do.

In my understanding, there is another symbolism in the painting – the colorful flowers which denote hope and positivity. To me, it implies that we need to learn from the lockdown and start living in the present – allowing ourselves space to experience new things. Because whatever is supposed to happen, will happen and when it does, we wouldn’t have much control over it anyway. So we might as well start living fully in the present and have faith in the universe that the future will be more colorful than the present – just like the flowers in the painting 🙂

By the way, I forgot to mention the name of the mural “Antes perdida por aqui algures, do que a caminho de nenhures” which literally means “Better lost here somewhere, than on the way to nowhere” Isn’t’ that beautiful?

Disclaimer: I am neither an Art or an English expert, this post is my interpretation and understanding of the painting. It is just an expression of my feelings. The intent of the post is not to critic the art or the artist, no offense is intended.