Finding

When asked, Picasso said: “I do not search, I find.” This may seem the extraordinary flamboyance of a genius, but every day we too find without searching. Maybe not what Picasso found, but still.

So, there is finding without searching. Is there? Do we not secretly search for all sorts of things all the time? Do we not constantly find what we unconsciously have been looking for for so long?

What do we know about finding? How do we know that we have found something? Silly question? If a man finds ‘the love of his life’, does he know for sure there is no other woman that would have been an even ‘greater love of his life’? If a woman says: “I have found myself?,” is it not possible that she has found someone pretending to be someone who has been able to find ‘herself’?

The purpose of searching is clear: need. But what is the purpose of finding? Relief of some need? Finding yourself being chosen to be the best man for the job, may offer you great relief. But finding yourself being beaten up, will give you anything but relief. Finding is not necessarily connected to fulfilment.

And then again, what is there to be found? Are we entirely aware of what we find when we find ourselves once again awake in our bed in the morning? Do we find something, while we are not aware of it? And if we are aware of it? When we find love in our mind, what is it that we find? Yes, love. But what is love?

Even Picasso did not know what love was, while he was feeding on it all the time. The love for beauty. He never shared his house with a woman that was not beautiful. He, the great modernist. He found nothing outside beauty - even when it was ugliness he was after...

Are love and our longing for beauty the engines behind all our finding, even if we are drowned in hatred and ugliness? Unconsciously? Outside any radar? Detached from any GPS?