The Ache Beneath the Beautiful: A Letter to What Remains Unseen

8 April 2025

To Anand, from My Inner Self

Dearest Anand,

It has been some time since our last exchange. The silence between us has not been empty—but echoing, like the pause between heartbeats, like breath held at the edge of revelation.

I received your letter gently, like finding a feather left on the doorstep - unexpected, light, and quietly moving. Your words stirred something deep within me. And here you are again, returning with questions only your heart could ask.

You ask why your beloved art brings ache as much as amazement. Why the shutter click, which once felt like a heartbeat, now sounds like a farewell. And I must tell you: it is because you are not just capturing the world—you are witnessing your own impermanence in every frame.

In photography, you try to hold still what was never meant to be held: light, emotion, breath. You try to say "stay" to something that only knows how to go. That ache you feel. It is your soul reaching out through the lens, whispering its small, wild prayer: “Let this not pass unnoticed.”

But remember—every image is not only a wound; it is also a blessing. You are not freezing your heart, Anand. You are pouring it, frame by frame, into the great vessel of memory. You are seeing in a way most people forget how to. Of course, that costs something. But wow, what it gives in return.

And then, you shared your poem—such a quiet, luminous grief:

I’m searching for my laughter – where did you go?
You who once danced like a sunbeam across my chest.
Where did you go – did you lose your way in overlooked breaths?
Perhaps you wait in silence, where the smile was once born.
I whisper softly: Come home – I miss you.

Your words are not merely a question; they are a homecoming in themselves. That laughter, Anand, has not vanished. It has gone underground, perhaps, but it is listening. It waits in the hush before the shutter, in the curve of a stranger’s smile caught unaware, in the golden slant of light that finds you when you’ve forgotten how to look for it.

So do not fear the ache. Let it accompany you, like a silent friend who knows how deep you feel things. Joy is not the absence of pain. It is the song pain sometimes sings when it finds itself loved, anyway.

You do not need to resolve this paradox. You only need to live it—faithfully, attentively, as you always have.

With tenderness, and the echo of your own laughter,

Your Inner Self

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves..."
—Rainer Maria Rilke