Leonardo da Vinci lived from 1452 to 1519. It is believed he died of a stroke at the age of 67. During his life he was the preeminent inventor, painter, entrepreneur, scientist, philosopher, and artist in the world. His works are world famous and fetch millions upon millions of dollars when sold.
His most famous piece of artwork is arguably the Mona Lisa, which hangs in the Louvre museum in Paris, France and has since 1797.
Begun around 1503, Leonardo carried this painting with him until his death in 1519. It was the one painting that many believe Leonardo never actually finished. Some believe that Leonardo’s right hand had become paralyzed and therefore he couldn’t finish it. (Although Leonardo was left-handed, he actually painted with his right hand.)
Others believe that he simply never got around to it. Still others (myself included), believe that Leonardo never intended to finish it. He loved Mona Lisa so much that he carried her around with him as he moved from location to location, touching it up here and there, until around 1517 (the assumed date of his paralysis). Even then he kept her with him.
Why would Leonardo do this? Why not “finish” her? Perhaps it’s because some things are never able to be finished. Perhaps some things, are perpetual works of art. Sometimes we fall so deeply in love with something we never wish it to end. Maybe this is how Leonardo felt about his beloved Mona Lisa.
I for one choose to believe he never finished Mona Lisa because he always felt she had more to offer the world.
In many ways, aren’t we all like the Mona Lisa? Aren’t we all painting a life that will never quite be complete?
You’re not done yet. Wherever you are in life, whatever your past has been up until now, no matter what choices you have made or mistakes you have committed (or even heights that you have reached), you are not done yet.
Just like Mona Lisa, you are a perpetual work of art, never finished, never completed, always with something more to offer the world.
This is a sobering proposition. It deserves our attention. It requires introspection.
Who are you capable of becoming? Have you ever really given that question serious thought? If not, how would your life begin to change were you to do so?
It takes courage to stare across the abyss of who we currently are to who we are capable of becoming. That gap can be large, deep, and fraught with danger. It’s not easy. It can be uncomfortable. It can be scary.
But it is crucial that you do so. Not just for yourself, but for the world. The world needs what you have to offer, whatever that may be that is good, and pure, and whole. It needs you and uniquely you. You cannot afford to stand on the sidelines for others to carry the load. You have a part in this. Do your part.
You’re not done yet.
For whatever reason, I have been seeing lots of memes, posts, and more on social media about pursuing happiness. One of these declared, “Just do whatever makes you happy and don’t worry about anything else.”
Really? Nothing else? Your own happiness is the only thing of value worth pursuing?
I’ll admit, I find this advice to be trite and shallow. I realize that I will get some pushback on that, and that’s ok. But, happiness should not be the goal for life. In my view, happiness is not only temporary and fleeting, but situation dependent. Simply pursuing what makes you happy is one of the fastest ways to unhappiness that I know of. A paradox to be sure.
Think about this for a moment. When side-by-side comparisons are made and happiness levels measured, people with kids are on average less happy than their childless counterparts. Some have pointed to this as a reason for not having kids. Yet, if you ask virtually every parent out there if they would go back and do it again without kids, the overwhelming answer would be no. Why? If on average you would be happier without kids then why would any reasonable person answer no to that question?
Because it’s the wrong metric. You’re asking the wrong question.
The question shouldn’t be “What makes you happy?” but, “What gives you meaning?”
Meaning. Perhaps that’s the key to living a fulfilling life. Not a happy life, but a meaningful life. What’s the difference?
Well, do you think Mother Teresa was happy? How about Martin Luther King, Jr.? Or Jesus Christ? Is Elon Musk happy? I can’t see how any of these people were happy. At least as a general and sustained state of being.
But did/do they have meaning in life? You bet your ass they do. The impact that each of these individuals have made on our culture, our societies, and our lives is immeasurable.
In his groundbreaking book, Man’s Search for Meaning, psychologist Viktor Frankl wrote about his experience as a holocaust prison camp survivor. He wasn’t happy for most of his life, of that you can be sure. But, he wrote about how living through that experience allowed him to find meaning that gave his life a purpose. The results of that experience helped him change the lives of countless thousands of people (including mine) through his writings and clinical work.
I don’t think that being happy is bad, obviously. Only that we should think long and hard before making that our primary aim in life. I believe that we can intentionally build happiness into our lives in small moments between the responsibilities, the suffering, and the stress of living.
Happiness is a glass of bourbon and good conversation with a friend. It’s a gripping book, read by the fire on a winter night. It’s smelling the back of an infant’s neck while cradling them gently. It’s seeing your child toddle their first few steps or keep their bicycle upright for the first time.
It’s making love to your soulmate. It’s watching a sunset from a beach or a sunrise come up over the mountains.
These are the moments of happiness that can be had. Like fireflies in the night sky, blinking, fleeting, moments of happiness can be had. Bit by bit. Each flash of light causing wonder, awe, and an exclamation of “Oooh there’s another one!” as we point excitedly to it.
But as a pursuit? No. Try meaning instead.
Building a life of meaning is making a lasting and positive impact on your family, those around you, or your community. It’s about leaving the world a bit better than you found it. It’s creating the peace of mind that you are making yourself a better person and, by extension, everything around you better too. It’s about living a life worth living. Maybe some happiness is a by-product of that. Good. That’s good. But simply be grateful for it. Don’t make that what you strive for. After all, with as much suffering as there is in the world, the big question isn’t why we can’t be happy all the time, but why aren’t we sad all the time? The true miracle is that we are able to experience any happiness at all!
So, don’t strive for happiness. Strive for meaning instead.
I read a children’s book once called There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon by Jack Kent. I’ve linked a video below of a narrator reading the story if you are curious about it.
The basic premise is about a little boy named Billy Bixby and a small dragon that appears in his room one day. The dragon is tiny, about the size of a small kitten. When Billy tries to tell his mom about the dragon, she emphatically states, “There’s no such thing as a dragon!”
The dragon is ignored by Billy and his mother throughout the day. He begins to grow. And to grow. First he’s the size of a dog. Then fills a room. Eventually he fills the entire house. When Mr. Bixby comes home from work he sees that the house is gone, taken away on the back of the dragon. He finally locates the house and asks, “How did this happen?”
“It was the dragon,” Billy answers.
“There’s no such thing…” Mother started to say.
“There IS a dragon!” Billy insisted. “A very BIG dragon!” And then Billy patted the dragon on the head.
As soon as he did so, the dragon started to shrink in size, until he was the size of a small kitten again. Mother finally accepted that there had been a dragon in the house all along and asked, “Why did it have to get so big?”
Billy answered, “Maybe it just wanted to be noticed.”
Like most children’s stories, this one has a much deeper meaning than it first appears. Most of us are like Mother, not Billy. We have dragons that we face every single day and in a lot of cases we try to pretend they aren’t there. If we simply ignore them they will go away. That is very rarely the case.
Credit card debt, the IRS, communication problems with our spouse, bad eating habits…these are all things that generally start off as small, kitten-sized dragons. If we ignore them, even for a little while, they grow. And they grow. They grow until they become full-sized dragons with flames for breath, sharp teeth, and an appetite for us. They will consume you, eat you, and destroy you if not attended to.
I learned this the hard way. I have had various issues in the past like those listed above. I have buried my head in the sand on far too many occasions. I have hoped that they would go away. They never did.
It wasn’t until I had the courage to face those dragons head on that my life began to improve. I made a promise to myself that I would never hide from problems again. As they came, I would confront them. It’s not easy. It isn’t something that I want to do. But, I know what the alternative is. That tiny, manageable dragon becomes something I do not want to face as it grows in both size and ferocity.
A funny thing has happened since I have begun doing this. The anticipation of the problem’s outcome has generally become worse than the outcome itself. As an example, at one point I owed a tremendous amount to my credit card company. I ignored them for over a year. They wouldn’t go away. Their tactics continued to escalate in aggressiveness. I was scared. It was a very large dragon.
I finally just decided to call them. I wanted to work something out. The stress was getting too great. The pain too deep. I figured I could get on a payment plan of some kind and although it would take me years to pay back, at least it would be off my shoulders eventually.
When I called I was surprised to learn that they would negotiate the final amount due. And by negotiate I mean they were offering to take a substantial cut just to get it off their books. Apparently they were as tired of me as I was of them. We finally settled on a number that was around a third of what I owed. I sent them the money. They closed the account. Scary, fire-breathing dragon was a kitten again.
Face your dragons. They are much easier to slay when they are small and tame.
“Hey man, it’s good to see you again! How are things?”
I looked into my friend’s expectant eyes and for a brief second, thought about telling him the truth. Instead, I lied.
“Things are going great,” I replied and then to quickly shift the focus from me to him, “How are you getting along these days?”
Things were not going great. My business was on the brink of failure, my employees had begun sabotaging my efforts to turn things around, I was struggling with my health, I was broke…all the things that don’t constitute what we would describe as “going great.” In fact, things were bloody awful. So, why did I lie to my friend? Why did I tell him that I was fine when I was not? Ego? Shame? That masculine need to appear strong and in control?
This friend, who I don’t see often but when I do is genuinely interested in my well-being, deserved a better answer to that question, “How are you?” I too, deserved to give a better answer. The fact is, my friend cares about me. He’s one of the few people I have in my life who really wants what’s best for me. He would help me if I just had the courage to be honest with him. Honest with myself.
I believe it is time to be honest with those around us, who truly want what’s best for us. It is time to let our ego go, be humble and open to new possibilities. To allow our relationships to grow deeper. To be there for one another. To lean on and be leaned on.
Life is hard enough as it is. It’s harder when you go at it alone. And there’s no reason for this either. People love you. They want to help you. Be honest with them and let them help. Both your lives will get better as a result.
If you happen to see me and ask, “How’s it going?” you are going to get a real answer from now on. We both deserve that.
Several years ago I created and ran an organization called Passport to Boise. It was a summer program geared towards kids that helped them get out of the house, learn about local businesses, and ultimately explore potential career options.
Here’s a brief explanation of how it worked: a local business (say, a pawn shop or dental office or product manufacturer) would agree to host at least one event per month for the 3 main summer months (June, July, and August). The event they hosted could be an activity, a workshop of some kind, a behind-the-scenes look at the business and how it made money, or whatever else they wanted to do…the only stipulation was that it had to be about the business and not just a product or service showcase.
My goal was to expose these kids, ages 7-17, to as many different potential business types and industries as we could in the hopes that it might give them a sense of direction when it came to choosing a career path one day. At our peak we had around 50 businesses and over 300 kids participating each summer.
Anyway, one of the events that I hosted personally was called The Young Entrepreneurs Workshop. It was a 2-day event designed to teach kids about entrepreneurship and owning a business.
For the activity portion on the second day, we decided to have the kids be split into groups and create a fictional product. They had to create it, name it, price it, and then pitch it to me and the other colleagues on the panel, Shark Tank style. The best presentation won the grand prize, which I believe was two movie tickets per team member or something like that.
One of my clients at the time, a local pawn shop, agreed to let me come to his store and go in the back to find old junk they had that could never be sold because it was broken, obsolete, or simply unusable in some other way.
Back at the workshop, we divided the kids up into 3 groups of 6 and gave each team a roll of duct tape. In turn, they each went to the pile of stuff and chose one item. When we were done with that each team had a roll of duct tape and 6 items to use for building their product. The only rules we stipulated were that they use only the duct tape and the items they chose to build their product. Within those parameters everything else was fair game.
As the teams began working on their ideas they would intermittently send over a representative to ask me a question about the activity…
“Are we allowed to…?” they wanted to know, filling in the blank with a question about the process.
“Are we allowed to make the product for kids?”
“Are we allowed to make whatever we want?”
“Are allowed to only use what we need?”
Yes, yes, yes. Yes!
The hardest part was simply getting them to not ask permission to imagine! When I told them that if they were following the two simple rules we had put in place and that they could do whatever they could imagine, their eyes would light up and they would eagerly go back to the group with this news.
This entire exercise was designed to get them to imagine, to create, to dream. I wanted them to experience a time in their short lives where there were as few limitations as possible and simply be a kid, with a kid’s imagination.
Somewhere along the line, somewhere between being a kid and becoming an adult with adult responsibilities, we lose our capability to simply imagine. To dream of potential and possibility. It is heartbreaking that the world, pain, suffering, a mortgage, worrying about someone stealing your PIN, dealing with anxiety or depression or grief stamps this out of our souls. It is devastating (and I don’t think that is too strong of a word) that this happens to so many of us.
Think of the innovation, the improvements on the world, the alleviation of pain, and everything else that goes along with that if large swaths of us never stopped dreaming. Of imagining. Of Being.
The team that ultimately won the competition had created a “robot” called the Soldier Saver. It consisted of an old Rumba vacuum cleaner with a toy machine gun attached to it with duct tape and a discarded drone remote control.
“Ok, tell me what this is all about,” I said.
The group’s spokesperson, a young boy about 9 years old, spoke up.
“This is the Soldier Saver. It is a military robot that can go safely into enemy territory and kill terrorists with putting any soldier’s life in danger. We are selling it for one million dollars,” he said confidently.
Egging him on a bit I said, “What makes you think this robot is worth a million dollars?”
“Sir, this robot’s cost is much less than one soldier’s life,” he said quietly.
You could have heard a pin drop in that room. I looked at my co-panelists and saw that more than one of them had tears in their eyes.
I nodded slowly and offered, “That is a good enough reason for me.”
Needless to say, we awarded them the grand prize.
But the real grand prize was won by everyone in that room that day. It was the quiet reminder that imagination can be one of the most powerful forces on the planet and that it is critical - critical! - that we not lose it in our young children or in ourselves.
It can mean the difference between both literal and metaphorical death. The death of our soul.
Don’t let your soul die. Keep imagining.