Wilhelm Schmid wrote a book about the art of living in a way I didn’t encountered before. There are loads of positive thinking books but this is something else. Lebenskunst or the art of living is derived from the Greeks who were already practicing this form of philosophy.
Living in a thoughtful way is the message basically. Pay attention to what you do and do it with passion. It is hard to capture the whole philosophy in one sentence. But hey that is why I started this experiment in the first place.
He starts his book with this painting. A copy of Plato is laying next to man on the bed and you can see he is in thoughts.
Maybe the man in the painting is overthinking his life and wonders if there isn’t more to it. A moment of realization.
Maybe the man and the woman have just had sex, and the man (and possibly the woman) is thinking how much simpler their relationship was when their love was platonic, or sexless.
Also, the symbolism is fascinating. The man and the woman each have their own separate pool of light, but neither of them are bathed in it. And the viewer can also see what they have not yet spotted: it is beautiful outside, but they are sitting indoors, oppressed.