The Artisan Soul (12 page)

If our parents were unsuccessful in unleashing the genius within us, we may find ourselves spending the rest of our lives in search of our inner Bobby Fischer. He was perhaps the greatest chess master ever. At thirteen, he won what became known as the game of the century. Starting at fourteen, he played in eight U.S. championships, winning each by at least a point. At fifteen and a half, he became the youngest grand master in the world. Before he could drive or legally buy alcohol, he had achieved the only perfect score in the history of the U.S. championship.

Like Mozart, Bobby Fischer accomplished his greatest feats before the age of thirty-five. Everything after that point was downhill. Though the lives of these individuals are inspiring, if not overwhelming, they reinforce a mythology of greatness that produces a false idea of how greatness is achieved. This mythology of greatness is reinforced by the popular heroes of our time. Whether we look to icons like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods or celebrate the extraordinary achievements by the likes of Michael Phelps and Gabby Douglas, the idea that greatness comes at an early age or not at all is reinforced in our cultural psyche. The fact that Michael Phelps broke a world record in the two-hundred-meter butterfly at the age of fifteen years and nine months, then retired as the greatest Olympian of all time at twenty-seven only makes it more painful for us underachievers. It is inspiring and debilitating at the same time. Gabby Douglas became the first African-American to ever win Olympic gold in women's gymnastics. She became the best in the world at sixteen.

At sixteen, I wasn't the best in the world at anything. By twenty-seven, I was clearly not gold-medal material. If I had embraced their lives and their stories as the story of all of us, I would have jumped off a bridge at twenty-nine. After all, what's the point? We get one shot to be great, and then we turn twenty-one. We have one opportunity to do something meaningful with our lives, and if that doesn't happen, we are condemned to a life of mundane adulthood. Maybe that's why the drinking age is twenty-one; we have to find solace for our undeniable ineptness somewhere.

Is it possible that the reason these individuals provide such inspiration is that they are exceptions to the rule? We live in a world where the value of human lives has been flipped upside down. In ancient times, it was understood that the young were at the start of their journeys and that those who had lived long, colorful lives were sources of wisdom and insight. The greatest contributors to the world were the ones who had lived longest and best. The young admired the old; the novice treasured the opportunity to travel with those who had so much to teach.

Modern culture has flipped that upside down. The most popular arenas where talent is displayed to the popular audience are those fields where youth is the greatest advantage. I recently heard someone explain in an interview that it isn't difficult to figure out when an athlete is using performance-enhancing drugs. His reasoning was simple: When you are forty years old and competing at a world-class level against twenty-five-year-olds, you're using drugs. It is inescapable that there are arenas in life where the young have the greatest advantage, whether it is in professional sports or popular music or a particular discipline where the talent of our youth is exactly the talent that is needed. But to believe this is how our lives are supposed to work is a terrible misunderstanding of how greatness emerges and develops.

It is one thing to find a unique talent upon which to build a life; it's another thing to build a life as a work of art. That process takes a lifetime. I always hoped some unique talent would emerge from my life at an early age, but that never happened. In fact, after five decades, I have come to realize that for most of us the discovery and development of our talents is less like finding gold sitting on the surface and more like spending a lifetime drilling deep into the earth in search of undiscovered oil. It takes a lifetime for most of us to bring our talents to the surface and turn them into the material from which we build our lives. The most hopeful description in my youth was that I was a jack-of-all-trades and the master of none. The painful realization happened when I came face-to-face with the truth. I wasn't even a jack-of-all-trades; it was only an assumption made because I was the master of none.

It seems like I have had a thousand different jobs over the last five decades. I mowed lawns, bussed tables, became a waiter, became a chef—no, that's an overstatement: became a cook—was a lumberjack, worked as a carpenter, worked construction, put insulation into attics, picked oranges in the orange groves, worked as a painter and as a librarian, did landscaping, worked as a counselor, became a basketball referee and a football referee, all the while starting churches and social service organizations among the poor, which is very similar to being unemployed. I also worked as a metropolitan consultant, an urbanologist, a futurist, a professional speaker and a distinguished lecturer for a couple of universities, designed master's and doctoral programs for universities, and became the creative director of my own fashion company. Today I find myself working as an artist and as a writer and as a director, as a producer and as an entrepreneur. So let me summarize: I have had years of unemployment, moving from one thing to another, always trying to find that arena where I could best express the person God has made me and express the talents that I still have to believe he has placed within me. Thirty years ago I could have never imagined that I would one day have the privilege of creating a place like Mosaic and still have the opportunity to work as a writer, filmmaker, and artist.

I envy those people who early on identified a singular talent, knew exactly what they were born to do, and spent their entire lives doing it well. They have a distinct advantage over people like me. They just keep getting better and better and better at what they already did better than everyone else. But here's the unifying theme between those who find their unique talent at an early age and those for whom that talent takes a lifetime to develop: greatness never emerges outside of hard work.

We sometimes forget that the seventeen-year-old world champion decided early on to vacate childhood and take the attitude of a professional. By the age of sixteen, Gabby Douglas had already put in the ten thousand hours of deliberate practice that is so often described as the essential ingredient for talent to find its highest expression. Mozart did nothing but compose; Fischer lived, ate, and breathed chess; Jordan's entire world revolved around basketball. I am convinced that regardless of how extraordinary their raw talent was in childhood, that potential would have never become the brilliant expression of human genius without hard work. Eventually art becomes craft. The combination of talent and passion funneled through the crucible of discipline and determination resulted in an expression of skill and execution that was later deemed greatness and genius.

The times I have had the opportunity to be on a film or TV set, I have always been amazed at the creative energy that fills the atmosphere and the extraordinary commitment to excellence that each production demands. It's exhilarating to stand behind a camera and watch actors of extraordinary talent lay out a scene. It's inspiring to watch a great director as he orchestrates people and technology to create a moment that moves us deeply. If you have the opportunity to interact with cast and crew, you quickly realize that talent layers through every aspect of the filmmaking process.

I remember in one of the first projects I had the opportunity to direct, I was working through how to best use lighting in a scene where it was raining outside a Macy's parking lot. I walked over to an older man working the crane, which was our primary lighting source for this shot. I casually began to interview him about his life and work. He explained to me that he had been working on films for over twenty years. I quickly discovered that he had worked with some of the world's best directors, so I began to inquire in as casual a tone as I could, “So if, let's say, Spielberg was shooting this scene, how would he do this lighting? Or if it was Scorsese?”

I began drawing on his wealth of experience and realized that even though I was the director, in reality I was the student and he was the teacher. From lighting to sound, every grip and technician has a wealth of knowledge and experience, and more often than not, all that expertise is left untapped by those who do not realize they can learn from everyone. My volunteer cinematographer had been the secondary cinematographer for Terrence Malick's film
The Thin Red Line
. I guarantee you that most of our conversations consisted of me asking questions and then listening carefully while he answered. I quickly learned that the best way to produce your best work is to surround yourself with people who are committed to always bringing their best work.

Still, of all the moments I have had behind the camera, shooting from helicopters and directing underwater scenes, nothing matches what you experience at craft services—what the rest of the world knows as catering. I learned quickly that the better the set, crew, and cast, the better the food. I don't know if I have ever had better food in my life, or in greater abundance and variety, than when I sneaked in line to experience the artistry of the men and women who serve in craft services. At first I was surprised, but later it made perfect sense. If you expect the best lighting, the best sound, the best set design, the best performances, and the best directing, then you should of course provide the best food.

The same philosophy can be found in professional sports. When I had the opportunity to visit with the Green Bay Packers, I was given a tour of their extraordinary operation. Every detail mattered, from the quotes on the walls to the photographs and trophies hung in the halls for inspiration, from the expertise in the training room to the world-class execution in their kitchen. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the center of that universe was the area in which the team ate meals—with multiple options carefully orchestrated to fuel the optimal performance of every athlete on the team.

What I learned behind the scenes on a movie set and in professional sports is that there is a critical process that demands our highest engagement and execution if we are to achieve optimal performance. For some reason, somewhere along the way, the spectrum of creativity pushed the idea of art and craft in opposite directions.

Years ago in our community at Mosaic, we began designating the different tribes that served together.
Developers
worked in child development;
connectors
helped guests make friends and find a place to belong;
artisans
focused on the performing arts; and
craftsmen
created the infrastructure that allowed us to perform at the highest level of execution. I found it interesting that those designations were readily received by the groups, except for the craftsmen.
Craftsman
was perceived as a demeaning, even derogatory, designation. Yet the reality is that all of us are craftsmen. If we are going to live out the highest expression of who we are, we must recognize that the true artisan is also a true craftsman.

The artisan soul embraces and celebrates the elegance of workmanship. We understand that something becomes a work of art only because there is an artist at work—that, in fact, art plus work equals craft. The craftsman is the individual who goes beyond inspiration. This is where a lot of us get tripped up. We have come to believe that if we have a natural talent, creativity should come easily, especially when we add God to the mix. If God has given us this talent, if our talent is a gift from God himself, then shouldn't it just come naturally? Shouldn't the expression and development of that talent come easily? I think there is a subtle misunderstanding when it comes to gifts and talents and how they play out in real life.

We hope that discovering our talents, and even our calling or purpose, will lead us to effortless success. I would propose that the exact opposite is true: if God created us to be successful at something, then he has called us to work hard at it. I am absolutely convinced that a spiritual gift and hard work were never intended to be mutually exclusive. Potential is talent that has not been harnessed; it is what talent looks like when it is undisciplined. Potential is how we describe your extraordinary nature before you have gained mastery over that potential.

Talent, when fully developed, becomes a strength. When we have mastery over our talent, we gain almost superhuman strength. For me, it is illuminating that the etymology of
craft
goes back to an Old High German word meaning “strength.” The word
strength
later took on the additional meaning of “skill,” and from the concept of skill formed out of strength comes artistry. Every creative endeavor that a human being masters becomes a craft. Every creative endeavor involves the integration of passion and discipline, the intersection of talent and skill. Every creative endeavor is both compulsion and determination. Anything we aspire to do as an expression of our artisan soul requires inspiration and strength. And while inspiration has been overvalued, the importance of strength has been understated.

It is not incidental that when David calls Solomon to build the temple, he says to his son, “Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished. The divisions of the priests and Levites are ready for all the work on the temple of God, and every willing person skilled in any craft will help you in all the work. The officials and all the people will obey your every command” (1 Chronicles 28:20–21).

David's admonition to Solomon is not “be inspired and creative” but “be strong and courageous.” Certainly the building of the temple was one of the most inspired and creative endeavors known to man. History proves that Solomon was never lacking in genius or ingenuity. Here, though, we find the secret to his success and perhaps the secret to ours: to do our greatest work, we must overcome the temptation to be afraid or become discouraged, engaging the creative process with strength and courage.