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How's Your Masterpiece Coming Along?

Guest post by: Michael Hume

Article Overview: We were hanging out in Malibu this week, because we can, and we decided to go see what "The Getty Villa" is all about. I figured we'd spend a few minutes walking through the rich guy's old house, checking out some cool antique furniture and remnants of an opulent lifestyle of the past. Turns out it's a huge, full-blown art museum, and four hours later we still hadn't really seen it all....

How's Your Masterpiece Coming Along?

We All Have A "Prime Example" In Us We were hanging out in Malibu this week, because we can, and we decided to go see what "The Getty Villa" is all about. I figured we'd spend a few minutes walking through the rich guy's old house, checking out some cool antique furniture and remnants of an opulent lifestyle of the past. Turns out it's a huge, full-blown art museum, and four hours later we still hadn't really seen it all.

Oil magnate J. Paul Getty wanted to re-create a particular villa buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius centuries ago... he wanted a place to house his impressive collection of Greek and Roman art (as well as other prize antiquities), and he wanted visitors to feel what it would've felt like to spend time in a Roman villa from around the time of Christ. Opened to the public in 1974, then re-opened after rennovations in 2006, the Getty Villa has certainly hit the mark intended by its namesake. From the mosaic walls to the peristyle pools to (of course) the priceless statues and works of art, everything in the Villa takes you away and plunges you two millenia into the past.

Some of the beautiful works I enjoyed at the Villa were modern reproductions... most were around two thousand years old. The oldest thing I saw was a little figurine of a fertility goddess, the age of which is estimated to be between 4500 and 5000 years.

A placard often described an artwork as a "prime example" of a certain type of art from a certain period in history. You know me... my imagination goes to work on things like that... I got to musing about what the creators of these pieces would say if they could see what had happened to their works, thousands of years into what would've been their futures. "Amazing," I can hear the creator of the goddess-figure say, "I wonder why they kept this so long? It's not even my best work." "I wondered where that thing had got to," I imagine the ancient glass-blower saying about a piece now resting in a glass display case. "Funny anyone would want to look at it. I'm more intrigued by this amazing glass case, and the magic that somehow illuminates it in this dark room!"

And that made me think that each of us is laboring on our own masterpieces, every day. Do you think it's possible that, millenia from now, anyone will be interested in something you created? Maybe you're an artist who imagines such a future for your masterpieces... but most of us are just humble folks who probably don't realize that everything we do could be considered a "prime example" of a certain type of creation from this, our certain period in history. And it's no more preposterous than it was for many of those ancient artists that people will be interested in learning about us through the things we leave behind, even generations from now. Even if the things that intrigue them aren't our best work.

That paper you wrote in college... that house you helped build in your summer job before the Army... the piece of machinery you're wiring together at work today... that sliding-glass door you and your co-workers installed yesterday... that craft project you did the year you decided to make all your Christmas gifts... that goofy song you wrote... that mushy love poem you penned into the Hallmark card you gave your girlfriend. How would you feel if someone told you that thing would be sitting in a museum two thousand years from now, serving as a "prime example?" Would it affect the way you do your work today?

Maybe all of us should be inspired by such a silly notion, and labor on our masterpieces as though they're just that. Many of my clients want to be more inspirational (and therefore more inspired)... maybe a first step is to stop focusing on the mundane in their daily work and begin to see the masterpiece that lies in the stone, waiting to be freed by the careful chisel of the master. Is it an object... or an idea? Is it a sales pitch... or a relationship? Maybe as you go to work today, or run your business, or pack the kids off to school, or whatever... maybe it's a good idea to reflect on how your life's work is going, and what your masterpieces really are, and how blessed and inspired we all have the chance to be.

Maybe this fluffy little article will be on display in that distant-future museum... right next to that cool pencil holder you made in seventh-grade art class. What an inspiring thought! See you there.

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Article Tags: entrepreneurship, health wealth and happiness, inspirational leadership, personal responsibility



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