In 1969, a dear friend was in art school and feeling defeated by a harsh instructor. She began throwing away her paintings, and I rescued one small piece—no more than 8 by 6 inches—from the trash.

I had just returned from visiting Auschwitz and Dachau as part of a course called Man and His Institutions, and when I looked at the image, I was stunned. “Look at this,” I told her. “The red feels like humanity’s capacity for horror, and the blue like compassion. And up here—an angel flying sideways.”

She laughed and said, “That’s just the cardboard I mixed paint on!”

But I kept that little painting all these years. It was the moment I first realized that when we engage with imagery, meaning emerges—and that a sensitivity to symbolism invites us to imagine, play, and create our own understanding.