This week I went to the Van Gogh exhibition that’s currently in large major cities across the United States. It’s designed to give the viewer the feeling of stepping into the paintings by using virtual projection technology.
In the lobby was a sign above a very large box of oil paint tubes that asks the question, “What is success?” Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime. He wasn’t able to support himself and depended on money from his brother until his death at 37. He probably felt like a failure. Most of his 860 oil paintings were in the last two years of his life. Now his paintings go for millions of dollars and he’s considered one of the greatest artists of our times.
He wasn’t materially successful during his lifetime, but he must have felt a great inner desire to paint the world around him.
In Elizabeth Gilbert’s book about writing, Big Magic Creative Living Beyond Fear, she talks about the human desire to create or make things. She said writing (art or music etc.) isn’t a career but a vocation—a calling or mission. A career provides for us financially, a vocation may or may not.
She goes on to say you don’t have to be a genius to create. You don’t have to be the best. Everyone can and does create in some way. We shouldn’t compare ourselves with others or compete with others. Yet, sometimes we even compete with ourselves—our own past.
Achievements and it keeps us from continuing to create.
Gilbert became famous, after rich, after Eat, Pray, Love was published and later made into a movie. She said she’d write regardless if she had to support herself with a job. Her idea of creatively is that it is a gift, a joy and magic.
To her it doesn’t matter if it’s successful financially. Creativity has value in and of itself.
What does success mean to you? Do you agree with Gilbert? Do you enjoy doing creative things like writing, painting, gardening, cooking, and/or singing? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
share this:
