... I was reminded of a remark of Willa Cather's, that you can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life, as Socrates has been so tediously advising us to do for so many centuries, do you really examine a life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others?

Summary

In this quote, the speaker reflects on a remark made by Willa Cather about the limitations of capturing sunlight in paint. They relate this to examining a life and question whether one can truly understand a person by studying their own existence or if it is more insightful to observe the impact they have on others. The quote poses the idea of whether the focus should be on the individual as an entity or on the relationships and connections they create with others. It also considers the perspective of being the wall, suggesting a lack of a personal identity and only reflecting the shadows and rainbows cast by others.

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