When I was seven my mother gave me an illustrated book about the life of Leonardo da Vinci. It was about his childhood and how he found himself preoccupied with a different subject each week.
When Leonardo was obsessed with birds, his father bought him some books on birds - only to find Leonardo suddenly preoccupied with painting. Again, when his father came back with painting supplies, he found his son building a small mill. With Leonardo’s interests changing every week, his father concluded that he would end up with the uninteresting work of the notary.
We all know the ending. Leonardo becomes all these - a naturalist, an inventor, and an artist, among other things.
The book had such a profound effect on me as I was growing up. I knew I had a problem with shifting interests. Most kids do. We didn’t worry about career paths or choosing the right job. As far as we knew, the possibilities were endless. You could be a tenor astronaut who occasionally goes on the Tour de France. It was possible. Your mother said so. Hey, it happened to Leonardo, right? In fact, polymaths were en vogue during the Renaissance.
It doesn’t help that when you take up history in school, it looks as though everyone back then was a child prodigy (a fallacy, since most of the population doesn’t even make it into the books). A teacher even told me once “Michelangelo sculpted the statue of David when he was 17! What have you done?”
As if I weren’t feeling the pressure already.
But things were different then. In the first place, there were no graduate studies in ornithology. If Leonardo wanted to be an expert on birds, it probably took a few months to know all there was to know about them. The library of human knowledge was much smaller and more contained. There were more things that no one had observed or tried before. I’m talking about the basic things, the things that you don’t need an electron microscope or a Tesla coil for. It was easier to collect all the “ists” you wanted to attach to your name.
I keep forgetting this. I keep putting unnecessary pressure on myself about how I’m not doing, learning, or making enough things. Here’s my typical train of thought each night:
My novel is taking forever to finish. Why? Jeez, and I work on it almost every day…. I’ve been drawing random doodles on paper but haven’t uploaded a new journal comic…. With all my self-studying, shouldn’t I be fluent in Spanish by now? Plus, I think I can do better with work and updating my blogs…. Hmm, I want to build an outdoor deck but I just don’t have the time - or the money. Why do I want to do all these things anyway? God, I’m so fickle about what I want to do with my life. I’ll probably end up as a file clerk for a sleazy tabloid….
Then I end up weeping into a pillow à la Alain de Botton.
Knowing your limits
Here’s the truth: I can’t have it all.
I can be a good writer and a competent cartoonist. But no matter how much I want it, I can’t be both those things and the most gifted archaeologist and speak 30 languages and a highly-skilled woodworker and a mixed-martial artist who can beat up Jason Statham. I can be mildly competent in these endeavors, but I shouldn’t expect to be amazing.
“But anything is possible! You don’t have to accept these limits,” one might say.
I suspect that’s a myth. Because we’re human and, by definition, limited. We are not immortal, our brains aren’t infinite in capacity, and we need to sleep. We can try to push these limits to the edge, sure, but they will always exist.
Is this adult pessimism creeping in? Am I losing my childlike wonder? No. It’s not about giving up dreams and being “practical”. It’s about choosing our most important dreams and giving every breath to the pursuit of those dreams - the rest are distractions. It’s not “practical” in the notary sense, but it’s a graceful way of accepting limitations. It’s aiming for the big wins so that we don’t have to worry about the small ones.
Setting “hobbies”
So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to sweat the quality of my writing and cartooning, but I’m not going to worry about the rest. I’m going to keep practicing my Spanish, making stuff from wood, working on my garden. BUT I am just not going to worry about my proficiency in these things. I will do them because they’re fun and I’ll try to improve as I go along, but I am just not going to obsess about it.
We need to be more selective about the things we devote our attention to, if we’re to take them seriously. If I dedicate an hour each day to a different activity, how do I know what I truly love? How do I end up in a flow state if I keep task-switching?
At the end of the day I have to choose my life’s work, not because someone said so but because I want to be the best I can possibly be at it. And I can only be the best if I know the difference between my priorities and my hobbies.
I may not be Leonardo, but the energy I spend sweating that is better spent writing and drawing. Or sleeping. Limitations, remember? I’m not going to waste another evening crying about not fulfilling my human potential.
Thank goodness for that, cause it sucks to sleep on a wet pillow.
