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Over the past two weeks, I think I have paid more attention to global financial news than ever. Regardless of the various degrees to which one of us is and will be directly affected by the American prices, it was almost impossible to ignore the headlines. I had conversations with friends in France, Germany and here in the United States, during which we have all expressed their concern about economic prospects.
This is not an area in which I have an expertise, but I found myself thinking of trade and resources, and what it might seem to imagine that there are different economic landscapes, apart from the purely financial, which shape our daily life. It led me to reconsider not only what makes life lasting, but also what could make life good.
“The miracle of breads and fish” is a representation of the 16th century of the famous biblical history of the Flemish painter Lambert Lombard, hosted at the Snijders & Rockox House Museum in Antwerp. The story of Jesus nourishing a crowd with five breads of bread and two fish is the only story, apart from the resurrection, which appears in the four Gospels of the New Testament. In history, Jesus fears that the people would be hungry. The disciples want to send them back to find their own food, but Jesus asks them to feed the crowd. The disciples, according to the Gospel, answer that they have nothing, or not enough for everyone. Lombard's painting shows that instead of listening to these complaints, Jesus blesses what they have and asks the disciples to share it between the people. He ends up being more than food.
Lombard's painting is rich in activity and detail that suggests that it is a diversified crowd of different horizons. Some people wear pointed caps, some wear turbans, and on the right side of labor, we can see a silhouette with darker skin. People are sitting in clusters around the web because the disciples offer them food.
I have always loved the history of breads and fish because it suggests that the way we think about our resources is linked to whether we believe an abundance economy or not, in which we can extend hospitality to everyone, or an economy of rarity, which generates the competition and in which everyone must manage for themselves. For me, the two most important aspects of history shown in this work are the act of Jesus recognizing then thanking food, for what they already have, and the disciples sharing it between people and confidence will be enough. I wonder if the “miracle” may be as much an offbeat imagination as the divine arrangement. Lombard includes several empty baskets in the foreground of the table, perhaps to show that there will be leftovers. The blessing and sharing of resources seem to lead to having more than sufficient. But they had to stop at first and recognize what they already had between them.
Herbert Draper was an English neoclassist painter who produced works from the end of the 19th century to the 20th century. His painting from 1897 “Poti” reminds me that the richness of life is partly determined by the way we spend our time resources, which we consider to be worthy of time and to what extent we are willing to be present. It is a calm portrait of a young woman with red hair sitting alone next to a table with her back to the spectator. In her knees, she holds a silver saucepan in which she drops pink petals. The table has three lots of red, pink, white and creamy roses in richly colored colors. The woman makes Pot Pourri, a long process that would take weeks, even months, but there is nothing in the table to suggest a sense of rush. She works alone, apparently unconscious of us and the outside world.
For many of us, time is as precious as money, and like money, we can decide how we spend it, even if we have little control over the quantity we have. When we use the term “time is money”, what we say is that time is too precious to be lost and, by extension, that we hope to withdraw as much productivity as possible. But perhaps we should be inspired to spend time in a way that feeds us deeper, which could naturally require more patience on our part, without the constant fear of lacking time. We could focus on time, not only as a means of maintaining financial security, also necessary, but also as a way to make life rich in beauty.
The Spanish painter and engraver Francisco Goya created works that spoke to the social and political upheavals of Europe in the 18th and 19th century. A famous court artist, he painted “the self -portrait with Dr. Arrieta” in 1820 when he was about 74 years old as an expression of gratitude. Eugenio García Arrieta was a doctor who healed by a disease. In painting, a pale and almost lifeless guya sits in his bed and relies against Dr. Arrieta to obtain support. His left hand clings to the sheet as in pain, his head is tilted on the side and his eyes are barely open when the doctor holds it and tries to give him something to drink. We can see the contrast between health and disease in faces positioned side by side. The red cover puts more emphasis on Goya's drained complexion. Behind the two men, a blur of indistinguishable faces appears as ghosts. And yet, the sweetness of the doctor seems to be a sign of his determination to nourish the sick man with health. After Goya recovered and painted the work, he presented it as a gift to the doctor.
Looking at this work reminds me of care as a resource. The care economy is a recognized sector which focuses on work, paid and unpaid, which takes place in domestic, institutional and medical environments. But humanity and sensitivity shown in the work of Goya reminds me that we are all part of a way of a care economy because we all have the capacity to be compassionate to other people and to support wider care systems for people who need them.
Perhaps if we allow ourselves to imagine an economy of abundance, in which we exchange currencies of hospitality, patience and care, even if we fight in an unpredictable financial economy, we will discover experiences that add wealth to our lives.
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