Once upon a Time there was a boy born to an unwed mother in a small village. He was like all little boys and girls…He wanted to have a nice life and grow up doing worthwhile things. But his birth was not auspicious for his mother was not married to his biological father and this was considered a very grave and unforgivable sin in the day and age into which he was born. It was not his fault, born into an unwed couple but the people, the culture, and the society where he found himself did not take that into account. He was but condemned as a bastard and an outcast no matter. And it would unfortunately mark and limit him for his entire life.
His father had little time for him. And social things being what they were, he was motivated to ignore him. And while social mores of the time, placed no duties or responsibilities upon him for his bastard son, he did not abandon him. But he also did not nurture him.
The young boy, adrift was befriended and rescued by his Uncle who believed in the boy no matter the circumstances of his birth. For there are those few who do not see what others dictate but rather see and do what the Heart and Soul says and needs. The Uncle was as a good father to the boy and encouraged him and nurtured him as his own son.
And thus the outcast and lost boy found Hope, his Heart not becoming cold and inverted and his life turning away from Life, Love, and Light. Instead, he also found…Opportunity.
“Could you have painted something of art upon this buckler, this small shield, that I made from a fig tree that I cut down?” came the request. And his father, wanting to favor the requester, though a peasant, for usefulness and dutiful service, brought it to the boy to see what he could do with it. Here was his opportunity to do a thing constructive and artful and to demonstrate his ability and potential! An initial start, perhaps, to a masterpiece or two later in his life.
The boy threw himself into the task with a Passion! He was not an accomplished artist, but this did not deter or stop him and his fledging efforts. He did not know who had made the shield, his father not telling him. But he saw it as crudely made and wanting of improvement. He straightened its twistedness by fire and then gave it to a turner who made it smooth and even. He then finished it a coat of white paint and having finished it as a canvas, turned his mind to what to paint upon it.
How best to impress…To generate surprise and terror at those who would gaze upon the shield? For what is the purpose of a shield than to defend physically but also to defend mentally by striking fear and terror in those that behold it?
He seized upon the idea of Medusa, the Ancient Greek monster that turned people who gazed upon her terrifying face and snakes in place of hair into stone such as her striking visage. Now…How best to envision and then paint this terrifying image?
The boy brought into his room samples of creatures and animals that he could gather around himself. Lizards great and small, snakes, and bats. Crickets, grasshoppers, butterflies, and others great and small. Some he examined. Others he dissected, looking for the source and the essence of their strangeness and fear generation in others. Much time passed and still the boy worked on, oblivious to everything but his passionate task.
Some many days later, so much so the request having been forgotten by both his father and the peasant requester, it was finished. Leonardo sent for his father, arranging the shield on the easel into good light. His father upon coming into the room and beholding the painted shield started and stepped backwards thinking for a moment that the monster painted upon it was real. The boy was very pleased with this result as it was exactly what he had sought and worked so diligently to for a great many days.
The boy’s father, seeing such an impressive and miraculous work of art, praised the boy. He then took the painted shield and sold it secretly to a merchant for a large sum. Who in turn sold it to a rich man for three times that sum. The father then secretly found and bought another small shield from a peddler, similar to the original crude one, but with a heart transfixed by an arrow painted upon it. This he presented to the requester, his peasant, who thought it such a great favor that he remained obliged to the father for the rest of his life. Never knowing of the great Medusa painting that he had initiated and then missed.
And of the boy who painted it…And of the great change in life, the gift of opportunity and a Start, that he had gave the boy. For without it, and the magnificent effort and results of the boy, the boy may have spent the rest of his life in the small village never approaching or becoming the famous and masterful painter that he was destined then to become.
From Serendipity comes Opportunity, which once Realized, propels One to One’s Destiny.
For many of us, we are also effectively born out of wedlock, ignored and not nurtured by our fathers and sometimes not by our mothers either. Often, we do not have a kindly uncle nor a great opportunity that can open the doors to a great career and life. Instead we scrabble and scramble throughout life to just survive all the while trying to demonstrate our possibilities and potential so that both can be realized.
And sometimes, like me, we never really find a place with others, in employment or business, where we can shine and show others and ourselves just exactly what we can magnificently do and accomplish.
Yet we still struggle onward and forward, looking for someone to Believe in us, in our Potential and Possibilities, and the Ideas and Great Things that we can achieve with but a little encouragement and time to implement them.
Sometimes we go forth alone, crippled with incompleteness and loneliness, to what we can as we can.
Sometimes, we go forth with some better or worse company, that may not really help or may actually dissuade and discourage us from being all that we can Be and doing all that we can Do.
And Sometimes, we find an Angel than encourages us and completes us, that we can go forth together with to both Destiny and Forever Love…
