Infinity is not hard to look at. It’s impossible, by definition. Most people think of infinity and think immediately of space, endless in all directions, containing mostly nothing. Thats why when we start to think about it, our brains can freeze. The numbers, the sheer weight of it’s scale, is too large for our brains to comprehend. So we freeze, and go check our email.

The Internet, like life, feels infinite. There is just so much to look at! Its almost stress-inducing. Apart from the ills of information that is foisted upon us in the guise of notifications and bad marketing, even self-directed learning online now is plagued by a simple nagging thought - where do you start? How do you deal with infinity here? How do you sit at a laptop, and take that meaningful step into the void?

I think I have a solution.

Try art. It worked for me.

Many years ago, I lived close to the National Gallery of Ireland. I was in my early 20’s and had no real “use” for art in my life. I was too busy trying to look cool, a tricky feat for a self-conscious software engineer. Yet when it came to art, fine art in particular, I constantly had the feeling that something must be going on. Everywhere I turned, people I admired were constantly mentioning their love of this and that type of art, or the inspiration that a certain artist gave them. I was curious, or maybe I had low-grade art FOMO. I bought a “dummies guide to art” book, and surreptitiously read it in my room. I gained a little information, but not a lot of insight. It was enough.

Thinking that I had a tiny, tiny handle on this “art” thing, I started to visit the Gallery semi-regularly. I would wander the halls and hover over the pieces that interested me. I was skimming, and watching how other people reacted to the pieces on the walls. On one of these occasions, after wandering for a while, I found myself in front of a painting called The Taking of Christ, by Caravaggio. Its a large piece, with a lot to take in. I remembered fragments of it from my only art book (remember, the “dummies” one?). I stood there, and my thoughts turned to an exercise I had learned years previously in a practical philosophy class. It was an exercise in the simple act of noticing. I had passed this painting a few times before, and marvelled more at its size than anything else. But I had never noticed it before. So I looked at it, really for the first time and tried hard to simply notice.

And there it was. In amongst my inner monologue of “I don’t know what I’m looking at/Art like this is for smart, rich people/what am I doing here/maybe I should leave”, my eyes settled for a moment longer on Jesus’ nose. It was pale and nuanced, and the light fell on it in such a way that it looked waxy. It had contours and, I thought, character. My eyes darted off to another part of the painting, to a man holding a lamp. I noticed how 3-D it looked. Suddenly, the painting jumped out at me. It was a scene, full of motion and emotion. There seemed to be story in every single character, and a feeling between them all. The rest of the world dropped away from me and came into focus at the same time. It felt like I was looking at a single movie still and it contained the whole movie. I now had questions. What happened after this scene? What had happened just before? Every detail of that painting whispered history, and I now felt a part of it’s timeless brush strokes. I could see it now.

That painting changed me. One thing I realised in that moment was that this painting was for me too. I was trying to understand the world of art, the infinity of it, when all I had to do was look at the smallest part possible and allow myself to really see it. The small made the large finally visible.

I still go back a few times per year to help build my ability to notice, to be able to step back and “see” again. Sometimes I’ll see, for instance, a Rembrandt, and I’ll try to find where he uses just one colour, such as yellow. When I see it, really see it, the picture immediately changes and I feel like I suddenly know more, about it and about the world. I have a thread to pull on and thats enough in infinity.

Each time I visit, it often helps me to pretend that I know nothing about this world, and that this is the first thing I have ever seen. It’s as much a physical action as it is mental. When I go, I literally take a step back, relax my shoulders and my eyes and try to see. The infinity is tamed right then when I relax and I have a starting point.

Life, and indeed any part of life, is composed of infinity. It’s all around is, and it’s the stuff that possibility is made of. Its not to be feared, it’s to be understood, and used. It’s beckoning us to come closer. It’s daring us to peek through the keyhole, to find a way in and to see what could be.