The Artisan Soul (13 page)

Isn't this a strange time for exhorting someone to be strong and courageous? I can understand language like that when talking to Joshua, about to go to war as he enters the Promised Land. It makes perfect sense to remind a shepherd boy about to face a giant that he should be strong and courageous. If someone is about to be thrown into a lions' den, I understand why the pep talk would be, “Remember, be strong and courageous.” But Solomon is facing none of that. He lived in a time of peace and prosperity, yet the work that God created him to do would require the same mettle that David found inside himself when picking up five smooth stones. I want to assure you that if you are determined to live the life that God created you to live, if you are committed to making your life your most creative act, if you resolve to do nothing less than to make your life your greatest work of art, you will need the same strength and courage that David hoped for his son Solomon.

The Scriptures see work as a sacred space, and every sacred act requires both courage and strength. It is also important to note David's vision of how this immense project would be accomplished. It was a mission bigger than Solomon, so he reminds him that “every willing person skilled in any craft will help you in all the work.”

Solomon was to bring together only the willing and only those who were skilled. I imagine there were many people who were willing but not skilled and others who were skilled but unwilling. Before taking on this great endeavor, he was first to bring together the right people to accomplish such a great task: Find the people who have a passion for their work and who have paid the price of honing their skills of their particular craft. Those are the people we want to bring together. Those are the people we want to build our future on.

You can be an architect, but to be the architect God created you to be requires strength and courage. You can be a teacher or an attorney or a financial planner, but to be the teacher or attorney or financial planner that God created you to be is going to require strength and courage. You can be a writer or a dancer or a painter, but to be the writer or dancer or painter that God created you to be is going to require strength and courage. Because if talent requires discipline to reach its highest expression, all the more does becoming the person God created you to be.

Like talent, character is formed through discipline. In my last book,
Wide Awake,
I laid out a process for all of us who know that we have much yet to accomplish. It's been a wonderful realization after fifty years of life that if we work hard enough, hard work will eventually be mistaken for talent. And if we refuse to give up, perseverance will eventually be mistaken for greatness.

Two of the most inspiring and talented craftsmen I have the privilege of knowing are Emerson Nowotny and Christian Navarro. Emerson is a craftsman who chooses wood and stone as mediums for his art form, as he creates environments that both inspire people and bring them together. Emerson, who is from Bolivia, started building with his father when he was a small boy. At fifteen, he began working with a construction contractor to pay for rent. He learned various trades and soon became a foreman for the company. At twenty-six, he opened his first restaurant and did the build-out himself; that's when he began integrating construction and ambiance as his context for art. Soon he owned two restaurants, building them both himself. He now has been creating human spaces for eighteen years.

I love sitting down with Emerson, imagining what a space could look like and feel like, and watching him translate our imagination into reality. Everything Emerson touches is filled with warmth and love. Every environment that he moves from design into execution creates a sense of community while making people feel as if they are walking through an installation at a gallery. But don't kid yourself—this never comes easily. I don't know anyone who works longer hours or does harder work than Emerson. We benefit not only from his immense creativity but from his incomparable hard work. This is what makes Emerson a craftsman.

Christian has chosen a different medium: he is a gourmet chef. I have found numerous excuses to invite Christian to cater events here in Los Angeles. Everything he creates is visually stimulating as well as mouthwatering. Part of his presentation is to explain with each course how what we are about to experience reflects the way his food integrates his experiences as well as his expertise. Everything is a fusion of the different worlds through which Christian has passed. And whether it's an unusual integration of Mexican and Korean dishes or some unexpected meeting of Italian and Japanese, every course that Christian serves is an extension of his life and an expression of his story.

Christian began cooking professionally at twenty-two, though he began to experiment in the kitchen when he was ten. Fried rice, flan, and spaghetti bolognese are the first things he remembers making. He made his first meringue at twelve, when most of us were only eating it! He estimates that he has spent more than 22,000 hours cooking and has invested at least 17,000 hours working on his craft for the purpose of gaining mastery over the culinary arts.

His food is not only an extension of his past; it's also deeply rooted in the present. He uses only fresh and organic materials, cooking from what is available today. Thus the fish and spices and vegetables will change based on the best reflection of today's offering. At the same time, everything Christian makes clearly looks to the future. By bringing together the foods of different cultures, it feels as if Christian is making his own attempt to bring the world together. He is informed by the past, but every creation is an attempt to imagine a new future.

Like Emerson, Christian is a craftsman. I assure you, when catering events in Los Angeles, inventing all new approaches transforms a safe meal into a courageous experiment in the culinary arts. I have watched how hard Christian works, and I know that creating as he does requires both strength and courage.

Emerson and Christian personify the elegance of workmanship. Everyone I know envies their outcomes. It would be easy to conclude that who they are and what they have accomplished are simply the result of their rare talent. I know I would be the first to acknowledge that their talent is rare. I think it would do them a disservice to not also affirm how rare their commitment is to hard work.

We have seen far too many people publicly fail because their talent was greater than their character. Could there be a more poignant reminder of this reality than the life and career of Lance Armstrong? The winner of seven Tour de France titles and perhaps the most iconic name in the history of cycling, he was stripped of his titles because he chose not to live strong. Remember, craft means strength. If we are to live strong, we must ensure we have the strength of character to make our lives into our greatest works of art. Moments of greatness are far more appealing than a lifetime of faithfulness, but it is only through a lifetime of faithfulness—a lifetime of integrity, in which we have chosen to be strong and courageous—that we will look back and realize that our lives have become masterpieces.

Have you ever had a moment when you knew you were awesome? I know you are not supposed to say that, but have you ever thought it? You know, that moment when everything just came together. You were in perfect form. Some athletes call it “the zone”; in other disciplines, they call it “finding your flow.” As a speaker, it's the moment when you don't even have to think. The words seemingly form themselves.

More often than not, that moment comes as a great surprise—that moment when you can't miss from the three-point line; that moment when you are teaching your eighth graders and you have them mesmerized, even though the subject is French history; that moment when no matter what question your antagonistic audience asks you, the answers roll off your lips as if you were Socrates; that moment when no math problem is too complex; that moment when you know exactly what to buy your wife for your anniversary; that moment when you have such clarity that the entire universe makes sense to you; that moment when you are awesome—and then you lose it. It only lasts a couple of minutes. The problem is you don't know how you got there and you have no idea how to get back. But those five minutes of greatness will haunt you the rest of your life. The loss will also mislead you. You'll spend your life trying to find the zone, get back your groove, step into your flow—and all the while what you experienced was a glimpse of the person you could become if you disciplined yourself to live at your highest level of execution. There's something wonderful about a moment when you express your best work.

Our potential future has a curious way of impinging on our present. Those moments when we are at our best open a window into the person we could become every single day for the rest of our lives. This is true not only for our talent but also for our character. Have you ever had a moment when not only were you awesome, but you were a really genuinely awesome person? You can't say it because that would ruin it, but you were really kind, humble, generous, thoughtful. It was the best
you
you had ever seen. Have you ever in a sense risen above the person you were and for at least a few moments become the person you only imagined yourself to be?

Sometimes it happens in reverse: we have five minutes of the worst of us. Usually we explain it with phrases like “I don't know what got into me” or “I just wasn't myself” or “Could we just forget what just happened?” but those moments are also windows into our future. If we're not careful, this momentary pause when we saw the worst of ourselves could become the person we wake up to every day. Without intervention, all of us have the potential to become the worst expression of ourselves. We must choose who we become.

But back to our most awesome self. Think about those five minutes—that moment where you were the ideal you. Think about what you would look like if those five minutes expanded into your life. Think about what your future would look like. Think about how the world would be better, how it would change your relationships, how it would change your life if you paid the price to become you at your best.

It is important to identify these “five minutes of greatness” because they can be windows into your future self. If you reflect on what brought you to this moment, you can begin to develop a strategy for living continuously in that sweet spot. Think about the conditions that surrounded you when you were at your best. Reflect on the condition of your internal world in those moments when you surprised yourself. Take time to relive those moments, working them deeply into your mental muscle memory so that you build patterns of excellence in your life. A life well lived is the sum total of a vast number of moments lived well.

The craftsman understands that beauty and excellence are found in the details. When it comes to making our lives into works of art, the details are formed by how we choose to live day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. The artisan understands that the journey is marked by steps. This is the journey of the craftsman, to recognize that art has in its universe words like
creativity, inspiration, beauty,
and
imagination,
but in that same universe are words like
perseverance, resilience, tenacity,
and
discipline.
We want our lives to be works of art, but we don't want the work to take a lifetime. And really how long does it take to make our lives works of art?

Art becomes a craft when inspiration is expressed in detail. Most people who describe themselves as visionaries are actually saying something quite different. They are abdicating their responsibility for the details. Details matter. The more someone or something matters to us, the more the details relating to them matter to us.

I have been married to Kim for twenty-nine years, and believe me—the details matter. Big details like birthdays and anniversaries matter. If a marriage is going to last for thirty years, you can't just be a big-picture guy. The beauty is in the details. The more I grow to love Kim, the more I come to understand her. I don't see her as simply one person among many. Love provides me with so many details about what makes her happy and what makes her feel most alive. When someone creates out of love, it is visible in the details. When something matters to us, the details matter.

Anyone who has taken time to read through the Hebrew Scriptures has to be struck by how unbelievably detailed God is when he gets involved in the creative process. He doesn't simply tell Noah to build a ship; he gives him details of how the ark should be constructed. He doesn't simply tell Solomon to build a temple; he lays out the details of how that temple is to be designed and built. God's process of creation involved meticulous attention to detail, including selection of the clay from which he formed man before the intimate act of breathing life into him.

We are to be guardians of the ideal, the process, and the details. There's an old adage that the devil is in the details, but the artisan understands that when life is a work of art, when we value our craft, when we embrace the elegance of workmanship, it is in the details that we experience the divine.

Moving the dream into the details is the true art of craftsmanship. It is here that we move into the tension of creation and refinement. It's easy to dream but too easy and too tempting to become lost in our dreams. It is too easy to allow our dreams to become an escape from life rather than fuel for life.

In our dreams there is no risk. This is where the creative act is vastly different from a dream. The creative act requires courage and demands action. The creative act moves us from ideation to implementation. If imagination keeps our universe ever expanding, creation holds the universe together. As creation reminds us, vision and details are not mutually exclusive.

As “big-picture” as the universe is, it is also a study in meticulous attention to detail. Here we are all called to be craftsmen. We are to work at our crafts as our expression of worship, never settling for anything less than mastery. Here we are often confused and misled. We often confuse genius with mastery. Genius is a gift we are given; mastery is the stewardship of our gifts. Our gifts and talents are the fireworks, but our commitment to mastery is the fire. Often genius is the terrain of the young, but mastery is a gift acquired only with time and hard work.