The Road Best Traveled: Innovation

This week, quotes by famous Dutch post-Impressionist painter, Vincent Van Gogh, “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” Therefore, “If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced but only by working.”

Van Gogh’s work is groundbreaking, influencing many contemporary painters. However, he did not begin painting till his late twenties, creating two-thousand works of art in a time frame of less than ten years. In fact, most of his characteristic pieces were created in the two years before his death. Van Gogh actually aspired to be a preacher and a missionary, his only foray into the art world as an art dealer at a young age. However, during his travels, he began painting and developed his own innovative style. The rest of Van Gogh’s life was tragic and is well-known, his bouts with mental insanity and his inability to be duly appreciated during his lifetime, ending with his suicide at the age of thirty-seven. It is Van Gogh’s courage for the original, however, that should be remembered. With such a short time to master art, Van Gogh not only perfected his talent but also created something long-lasting and original.

In modern times, it seems more difficult to create something groundbreaking. We already figured out the world is not flat and other wonders of science. We’ve listened to classical music and then to rock n’ roll, techno, rap, and hip-hop. We’ve read books from Shakespeare to Poe to Kerouac. We’ve watched dramas and comedies and abstract plays. Technology seems at its breaking point with internet and cell-phones. America has invented its fair share of products, now seemingly passing the torch onwards and importing to the extreme. We’ve even surpassed Van Gogh’s pointillism to Pollock or Warhol.

But, we should not forget Van Gogh’s call to action in each of our own lives. In his time, innovation probably seemed just as impossible, just with the borders of his universe even smaller than now. Consequently, our universe can be expanded beyond what we even can comprehend. Regardless of how old we are, how much time we’ve lost to other passions, we must pursue and learn and develop our own unique touch upon this world. This is not only for the benefit of making your own life richer but also to help enrich others as well. The world is hiring you and your next five, forty, or how-ever-many years spent painting, writing, inventing, discovering, experimenting, and creating.