POWER OF PERSISTENCE ONE SHOVEL AT A TIME
Have you ever had an undaunting task? Something you need to do, but you wonder if it is worth it, knowing what lies ahead.
Recently, Michael and I have been involved in such a task. We contacted a few landscapers, finding the hill too steep for their machinery. Being DIYers, we looked at each other and knew it was going to be our next undertaking. We hauled muck up the hill with a winch and four-wheel cart, one shovel at a time. I was at the bottom of the slope loading the cart, Michael was at the top pulling it up, and then we took the muck to the garden site, turning it over in the soil. Muck is an excellent fertilizer.
Then, we ordered six yards of sand; rainy days halted our progress and made the sand heavy. Michael was at the top of the hill shoveling sand into his ice fishing sled, which he slid down to me. I emptied it, one shovel at a time, and then I placed the empty sled back on the hill for a reload. Over and over again, one shovel at a time, the mound of sand was shrinking.
I thought of the analogy of this impossible task for two older adults and how much it is true about life in general. It certainly relates to art and writing in my life.
Looking at a blank page in writing, the shovel becomes one word at a time, how one word becomes 70,000 words: the power of persistence.
A drawing is when the shovel becomes a stroke or mark on the paper, which, over time, becomes a work of art: the power of persistence.
When we see Michelangelo’s finished, polished, and completed David 1501-1504, it is hard to imagine him sculpting it in his Florence studio from a single block of marble. Michelangelo created his masterpiece one chisel at a time in his mid-twenties.
Another artist who comes to mind is George Seurat. I have seen his painting “La Grande Jatte” (Sunday Afternoon in the Park) at the Chicago Art Institute several times. The canvas is about 7’ x 10’ and, according to modern technology, contains 220,000 dots. His theory of Pointillism places small dots of color next to each other so that the viewer’s eye mixes the color. The complexity of this color theory painting was created one dot at a time.
The power of persistence is contemplative and peaceful, and the hours go by without awareness until the ‘pile of sand has been shoveled away.’ What becomes your one shovel at a time?
