Patience and the Cold

I made the decision that I wanted to publish a book back in about August of 2018. It’s now been about 1 year and 9 months (21 months). Not a day has gone by since then that I haven’t thought about this dream of publishing a book. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t spent some amount of time working on it.

Ever since I visited Voka in Austria in the summer of 2018, and saw all the books he’d published, I’ve been plowing through books left and right. It’s taken a lot of patience, and a lot of confidence in myself to believe that this book is something worth doing, and that I’m capable of doing it. One book I recently checked out is ‘Leonardo’s Notebook: Writing and Art of the Great Master.’ It is an English translation of the thousands of pages of notes and illustrations that Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) left behind. Leonardo da Vinci wrote this about patience:

“Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. For if you multiply your garment as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience under great offences, and they cannot hurt your feelings” (da Vinci 402).

As I’m sitting here today doubting my abilities, and doubting the purpose of what I’m doing, those words give me some comfort. We live in a world today where everything is so instant. We expect instant clicks, likes, shares, etc, but often neglect the patience it takes to really do anything significant. So many people are chained to their phones, constantly checking every five minutes, and missing out on real opportunities that could be offered long term. I can feel that ‘cold’ da Vinci references, today as I’m writing this. I still have more travel to do, tons more paintings to paint, stories to collect, and journals to write. My book is still nowhere near coming to full fruition, but somehow I still have hope. I’ve had to increase my patience, and increase my faith in equal measures.