“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.”
(Leonardo da Vinci)
Artists often feel that their work on a piece is never done, that they are never truly finished. There are always more improvements that can be made: additions, subtractions, a little more nuance, a bit more simplicity.
As humans, we may feel this too, even if we don’t identify as artists. That our lives are never truly complete. . . not until we are buried six feet under or scattered in ash over our favorite mountain lake or rolling hillside.
These feelings can be both beneficial and detrimental. These feelings can take us to places of happiness and places of despair.
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None of us know how much time is left in our lives. There is no scoreboard neatly counting down the ticks to 0:00.
Sometimes there is overtime, and sometimes we don’t even make it to the second half of the game.
Anything can happen: leukemia at 19; death by orgasm at 104; succumbed to anxious desire for death by one’s own hand at 27. The future is never certain.
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If a piece of art is never truly finished—Da Vinci did, after all, die while still working on his lifelong love the Mona Lisa…still toying with her smile, not satisfied that perfection had been reached—then it’s also true that life is never truly finished. Not until our breath slows before it stops.
And if our lives are never truly completed until they are complete, let us at least continue to improve the portrait every day. Let us strive and let us be still. Satisfied yet hungry. Let us allow ourselves the room to grow. . . to cultivate the patience, forgiveness, and self-love required to do so.
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History has only known one Leonardo da Vinci, and even he wasn’t perfect. Even his most enduring work of art was never finished. But it was the best it ever could have been.
Let’s treat our lives the same way.
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