The Masterpiece Never Painted

I recently came across a story that I just can’t seem to get out of my head.  This tale was a true story about a man who apparently was highly esteemed among 17^th century writers.  He was famous among his peers in the writing community.   He was known during that time to be working on a literary masterpiece, and it was said that the world was waiting in great anticipation to see what this genius would write.  Theologians and philosophers believed this man’s published masterpiece would inevitably be considered “the best book ever written” outside of Scripture.  So, the man labored over his writing by studying, brainstorming new ideas, and choosing the best way to craft his story.
 
One day, unexpectedly the famous writer dies.  And it isn’t long before his faithful followers want to read all that he has written.  They knew that he had not completed his masterpiece, but they were hoping to glean whatever they could from this man’s wisdom by reading what he did get down on paper before he died.  To their great surprise they discovered when looking through his work, that there was NOTHING ever written down for this masterpiece.  NOTHING.   The man spent years and years and years thinking and planning for how this masterpiece would come together, but nothing was captured on paper.
 
And THIS reminds me of similar story in which an artist worked faithfully for years on his own artistic masterpiece.  When the artist died, the friends and family discovered that the masterpiece was a blank white canvas.  The painter had painted many scenes over the course of his years on this large canvas, but in the end, he always white washed his painting over.
 
In both of these stories you find two hardworking and committed individuals who clearly had a gifting for something.  They spent a significant amount of time investing in their area of expertise, and yet no one else was able to read it, see it, experience it, or share in the beauty that was created.  You have to wonder why the author didn’t have ANYTHING written and why the artist didn’t have ANYTHING painted.  Others were waiting on them. They simply wanted to get a glimpse of the process.  They didn’t expect perfection when it was incomplete…but they expected the process to have value and be beautiful, even if it was incomplete.
 
I could be wrong, but I think when hearing these stories it’s so clear why the artist and the writer stopped…  it was fear.  They could not settle for anything less than perfection to be seen by anyone else.  They didn’t want to be that vulnerable with their work.  They feared that their “work in progress” would be evaluated too early, and that their work would be seen as lacking, and only they would know that they had better things to produce.  
 
They knew of their own potential but were too afraid to share it.
 
And so, I keep wondering this: what are the things that we have to offer, but we refuse to share because we feel like we are lacking?  What do we hold on to that we need to share (even if we don’t have it “just right”)?  Is there anything beautiful that we can produce that we choose not to express, create, or share, because we believe more time and more effort will make it better?
 
And here’s the other thing: I think that the “unbeautiful” pieces of work…the things that had been unfinished… well, I imagine that they were still probably beautiful.  They may have not been perfect, but it would have added beauty and richness to someone’s life.  They didn’t need to be the best of the best for them to have beauty and value. 
 
We HAVE to be OK with making mistakes.  We HAVE  to be willing to share our lives with others even if it seems to us “unfinished.”  We HAVE to do this because what we think are our mistakes, may in fact be something beautiful that someone has been waiting their whole life to read, to experience, to understand, or to see. 
 
 
 
 
It may seem silly or insignificant, but these stories made me think about blogging.  For a long time I quit blogging because I didn’t think it was contributing much to the world.  I wanted to be a great writer, but I knew that I was average.  And I thought that maybe I just needed to master my craft a little longer, become a better writer, brush up on my grammar and writing style.  I also kept thinking, “well, I don’t have anything quite profound enough to say yet.” I even have a friend who listens to my daily life stories and will often say to me, “Why don’t you blog about that? You need to write about that!”   I always thought she overestimated my ability to think and create, but I am realizing, that even if she is… I need to be OK with trying this again…because maybe, just maybe, there’s something beautiful to come of this…