The Correct Measuring Of Excellence
It is unjust for your excellence to be questioned, as long as you are not put in a position to prove what you are able to give.
The narrow academic routine, which prevailed at that time in official education, pressed heavily on the shoulders of young sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, whose personality was formed and who was learned to work independently. As he himself noticed, most of those who obtained the coveted awards, ensuring their promotion, didn’t know how to shape correctly a nose, a mouth or an ear.
Bourdelle left the institute of fine arts, where he was the second admitted at the admittance examination, looking forward for his way in life. He said: “I don’t have the time. At 30, I will have proven myself. My work is in the street, in life.”
How do you inflame your excellence? I noted earlier that understanding the priorities and processes that cause your decisions are critical elements of your success. The strength of your focus is the thinking concentrated in form, not only on content, which needs to focus on the present, on the things that you can control, on speeding your own training.
Bourdelle would have wanted to carve huge cathedrals, just as medieval artisans, not only to model human faces, as art teachers would had required him. He also mentioned: “Art is the entire universe recreated into one man.”
Can you recreate your entire universe without changing its content, so that the art you are trying to highlight does not limit your potential to accomplish what can be truly virtuous?
Your own universe can be recreated through a fusion of art with life, and to not change its content means to remain faithful to an idea, a feeling, a certainty that cannot be attacked in any instance of the right to be an artist, because it convinces everyone with your very own personality. To discover the true benefits of the art you want to emphasize, you must first determine the limits you must overcome and actively consider the alternatives and the steps you should follow in order to perfect your mastery and become who you want to be.
The sound starting point in this respect is the disposal of “garbage”, of absolutely any element, any kind of thinking – imposed by others, which restricts your potential and that have no relevance to the development of your abilities. To generate change in you from a lower to a higher level, you must increase your efficiency and your productivity.
Productivity is like a remote control toy, which you can handle just as long as you power it with batteries. The difference between an independent craftsman (just as Bourdelle dreamed to become) and one who works by the pattern of others is that that first is always self-powering his own potential and value, while the second is powered by others up to a point in his own evolution. The first provides alone the basis of his own evolution, while the second must first strive to match the value that others confer to him, even if their ideas and vision differs significantly from his.
Just as business innovators must ensure that the benefits specific to the brand that they develop are not inconsistent, peripheral or relevant for only a small portion of customers – so you must section on your own the true knowledge, differentiate what is important of what is not, truth from fake. Clarify your ideas and validate your assumptions regarding the beneficial or harmful effects of your evolution through the influence of other “masters”, before following them.
To accomplish what can be truly virtuous is to turn your thinking into an art whose main direction is to establish a universe whose meaning is attached to the measure of the things you can accomplish on your own.
The Correct Measuring Of Excellence can be performed by one reference system: yourself. To create a solid foundation for your performance, you must first prove responsibility for the choices you make: to follow others and let yourself influenced by their own style models (so to follow the path suggested by them) or to follow the path that fulfills you and which is proposed by your instinct – the way of personal self-development. In order to achieve the highest levels of craftsmanship, you alone must create your own art.
It is unjust for your excellence to be questioned, as long as you are not put in a position to prove what you are able to give.
Conclusion: In any field, excellence is achieved in time. It is very difficult to obtain that unanimous recognition of a leader’s “artistic” abilities. Obviously, that external evaluation is based on actual facts that must be proved. It depends on the leader’s tenacity and power to demonstrate his excellence, on the evaluators to “correctly measure excellence” and on the general concept of society at a given time. In leadership, as well, “separating the wheat from the chaff” will be made at a certain time and will prove who deserves to be awarded excellence.
* Note: Adina Nanu – Bourdelle, Editura Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1971.
