When You and Your Work Become One

I don’t remember when and where I read this story.  Below is the soul of the story that I want to share with you today.

There was this artist who was deeply in love with his art. Passionately he would spent hours, days, weeks and months and would be too engrossed in his work.

Long hours would pass by, he would hardly feel tired, rather, his work would fuel and energise his body; his soul however, was always filled with devotion and love for his work.

When he was found absorbed in his work, people would look at him, his sculptor and art, marvelling at his inspiration.  Filled with admiration, people would appreciate his work, only few, his contemporaries, jealous of his art would criticise at his finer art.

He however, remained equitable to admiration and criticism both. Only making notice, when he must.

One day, when he was busy in refining and polishing one of the remotest corners of a ceiling, a man asked, when anyone would hardly notice the inner most corners of that wall, that too of a ceiling, why was he devoting so much of time there, refining his work.

To this he replied, not for anyone, but for himself and his God he works. He works with such dedication because he, the lord knows what he does and how he gives his complete self to the work he undertakes.

“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”

This artist, you know, is Michelangelo. One of the greatest artists, painters, sculptors and poets of all the times. He touched unparalleled heights due to his genius, hard work and love for his work. And this story comes when he was painting The Sistine Chapel Ceiling between 1508 and 1512 in the city of Vetican.

This story tells, when the work, the art, the artist and the reward become one, then is born divine perfection. One has not to wait for anything else then, one just has to ‘be’ in the process and relish the inexplicable.