The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing

“The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.” Thus spoke Vincent van Gogh, the painter of fire and sorrow, the man who saw light where others saw only shadow. In these words lies the confession of a soul who wrestled with both madness and grace, and who discovered that the truest art is not made with brush or paint, but with compassion. Van Gogh, who painted the trembling stars and the aching sunflowers, knew that to love others — deeply, vulnerably, without measure — is the highest act of creation a human being can perform.

To call love “artistic” is to reveal a divine truth: that love, like art, is an act of imagination, a shaping of beauty out of chaos. The artist takes the raw materials of the world — color, sound, pain — and transforms them into something that speaks to the soul. So too does the lover take the frailty of another being, their imperfections and fears, and beholds them with reverence. To love is to see not only what is, but what could be. It is to gaze upon the ordinary and find the eternal shimmering within it.

Van Gogh’s life itself was a canvas of suffering and longing. Poor, rejected, and often alone, he carried within him a tenderness that the world could not understand. His paintings, bursting with light, were not the works of a madman, but the prayers of one who refused to stop feeling. When he wrote of loving others as an art, he meant that every act of empathy, every moment of seeing another’s pain and choosing kindness, was as sacred as a masterpiece. His brush gave color to his soul, but his love for humanity — especially the poor, the weary, the forgotten — gave it meaning.

Consider the story of Mother Teresa, who, centuries later, walked the streets of Calcutta with no paintbrush, no canvas, but the same divine impulse. Her art was not in pigment but in presence. She touched the dying, clothed the sick, and called them beautiful when the world called them worthless. She, too, created beauty from suffering — and her gallery was not hung with portraits, but with lives redeemed by compassion. In her hands, love became sculpture, delicate yet indestructible.

The artist and the lover are kin, for both must open themselves to pain. To love is to risk the heart’s breaking; to create is to invite failure. Yet Van Gogh teaches us that these wounds are not shameful — they are holy. For the cracked vessel lets the light pass through. The greatest works of art — and the purest acts of love — come from those who have dared to remain tender in a world that hardens the soul.

To love others, then, is not sentiment but courage. It is the discipline of seeing beauty where others see ruin, of believing in people when they have ceased to believe in themselves. It is to paint with kindness upon the canvas of another’s life, knowing the colors may fade, but the gesture will remain eternal. Van Gogh’s words remind us that every human encounter is a blank canvas — and every act of love, a brushstroke of divinity.

So, O seekers of wisdom, let this be your art: to love with intention. Speak gently, listen deeply, forgive quickly. Do not wait for grand moments; paint your masterpiece in the small gestures — a smile to the weary, a word to the forgotten, a hand extended to the lonely. These are the strokes of immortality.

For in the end, as Van Gogh knew, to love is to create. It is to join the divine in its ceaseless work of beauty, to breathe color into a gray world, to make life itself a gallery of compassion. Therefore, live not as critics of the world, but as its artists — each day adding one more stroke of love to the eternal canvas of humanity.