Every semester--every semester--one of my English classes would get into the discussion. You know, the one where it suddenly dawns on the whole class that most of the authors and artists they have been studying were nominally or outright crazy or so totally dedicated to their craft that all other aspects of life became all but obselete. And we always ended up posing the inevitable question: Is greatness possible in a well-rounded life?
I've been thinking about this because we read Three Cups of Tea for book club. It's the story of a man who goes to Pakistan and builds schools in remote places. He is so totally dedicated that he doesn't show up for work, lives out of his car, forgets to call his girlfriend for six months....
So has he done something great at the cost of the mundane day-to-days that make or break a happy life? Or would it be worth it to be Van Gough if you knew that the cost was insanity?
Besides hosting book club yesterday, I decorated the house for Christmas. I cleaned a little. Shopped for ponisettas a little. Played with my kids a little. Cooked an awesome dinner for awhile. Wrote some e-mails, chatted with my husband, socialized with my friends, checked out some books from the library, swam...and I was flippin' happy.
But the question remains: Would this blog post be brilliant if I had spent the day wallowing in a pit of my own despair or ignoring my children while I contemplated the color yellow and what it means to the mysteries of the universe?
It just might be.
5 comments:
I guess it depends on who is defining brilliant. I'm sure one day God will tell you that you lived a brilliant life because you did so many, such a variety of, things and learned so much, and this is what makes you great. While the world rewards depth, maybe what we all strive for is breadth *~and~* depth to some degree in our lives. Whether this makes us potential brilliants or overstressed I'm not sure. I think most of us enjoy that kind of journey.
We read this book last month too, and we also wondered about that. His poor wife, we all said. No balance, we sighed. But good deeds, we admitted. And I decided that some people are Van Gogh. And those people need to be Van Gogh. And I think that whatever the cost, they're compensated. The law of compensation. I'm into that today.
I've thought about this a lot and 9 out of 10 I'm always glad that I have this balanced life. The other times I wonder if I'm just saying that because I don't have the passion for anyone thing, person or accomplishment to sacrifice everything else for it.
We talk of Van Goh only partly because of his artistic ability.
Do you and I know who Madonna and Brittney Spears are because they are truly great singers or songwrite?
Starry Night is a great painting, but would it really hang where it does if the artist had kept both ears?
I'm hoping you get some kind of email alert that tells you when someone is commenting on a post several months old.
So, I saw this post when you posted it but I wanted to think about it some more. I'm not sure I know the answer, but I wanted to at least point out thing. Van Gogh wasn't crazy because he was an amazing artist. Van Gogh was crazy because he had a mental condition.
He kind of becomes our example of the ULTIMATE artist because he was so unbalanced, but the idea that artists should be unbalanced wasn't even around until the Romantics started taking opium and having scandalous affairs.
Leonardo was arrogant, but lived a pretty balanced life. Artemisia Gentileschi was a mother. Jasper Johns, maybe the most important contemporary artist, lives quietly in Sharon, Connecticut.
Post a Comment