DAY SEVENTY SEVEN

Artists

The train raced through the night. The passengers sat in silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts.

I opened my phone and happened to come across a video filmed on the streets of Tehran. A crowd of fashionably dressed Persian women was walking along the sidewalk.

"Artists..." I whispered to myself.

My fellow passenger looked at me with curiosity.

"Why artists?"

"Because every woman is the author of her own portrait. Some paint themselves with their clothes, others with a smile, a glance, or the grace of their walk. And no artist can ever create the same masterpiece twice."

I kept watching the screen. The young women laughed, talked, and hurried on with their lives, unaware that somewhere far away, on a train speeding through the night, an elderly passenger was reflecting on the passage of time.

Beauty is not eternal. Youth passes faster than any train. Yet as long as a person can create beauty both around them and within themselves, time can never claim complete victory.

I turned off my phone.

Beyond the window, the night continued to race by.

What remained in my memory was not a crowd of unfamiliar women.

What remained were artists—people who, day after day, often without realizing it, paint their own unique self-portraits upon the canvas of life.