In her Oscar acceptance speech, Penelope Crúz advocated for the arts and their importance in living our best lives. Truly, where would we be without art? Without books and poetry that stir our emotions and challenge our beliefs, without paintings that frame us in brilliant color and shadow, without music that makes us feel everything, without pictures that help us see the sacred in the smallest details, without films and plays that reflect all of our struggles and victories?
“I need to believe that something extraordinary is possible.” — A Beautiful Mind
Art has been and continues to be something that sustains us through our dark nights of the soul. It can be as big as a Hollywood film with a multimillion-dollar budget and as small as a smudged pencil doodle scratched out in a neighborhood café. We want to know we are not alone in beauty or pain. Art helps us remember we are more alike than different, and that when we endure our suffering together, we grow closer, and that is indeed extraordinary.