Vincent van Gogh: lifetime failure or immortal success?

Vincent van Gogh: lifetime failure or immortal success?

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
- Vincent van Gogh, Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

You may have heard of the author of this quote. To many--believe this or not--he is a failed painter. Famous, maybe, but a failure.
Why could anyone consider one of the greatest painters in history a failure? Because he never sold a painting during his lifetime. Well, maybe one, if you consider a purchase by his brother Theo, who supported him financially for the last years of his life.
He was a teacher, a parson (at least he aspired to be one), a missionary and an employee of an art dealer. He was very ill for many years, resulting in long pauses between his painting pieces. Illness, among those who are financially successful, is considered a life failure. (How many financially wealthy and powerful people do you know who have disabilities or chronic illnesses?)
His teeth became loose and painful from his poor diet. He spent much of the money Theo sent him on art supplies, not food. At one point he told his brother that he had only eaten about six hot meals in the previous year. And he bought absinthe, his primary alcoholic vice. He may have had syphilis, as he was treated by Dr. Amadeus Cavenaile, whose office was near the docklands and was well known for treating those with the disease.
Does this not sound much like the dropouts, losers and failures of today’s society? He only lived 37 years, which we might expect today of drug addicts and the homeless.
However, Vincent was different from most people. Despite his failures, disappointments and bad turns in life, and his poor health when he was supposed to be at his most productive time of life, he had confidence in himself.
Vincent van Gogh dared to take chances with his beloved art. He painted differently from the majority of painters who made their living by selling their art. Who are they and where are their paintings now? we might well ask.
Exactly. Van Gogh is remembered, respected, admired, praised and revered for using the talents he had to produce something worthwhile. Most of the others are forgotten.
Van Gogh has already been dead many times more years than he lived. Yet he is still considered among those at the top of the field.
He dared to be different. He dared to subject himself to ridicule--artists have been known to be cruel when critiquing each other’s work.
If you want to be remembered long after you have passed from this mortal coil, you must do something worth remembering. That doesn’t have to be artistic, athletic or economic. The founding librarian at my local library will be remembered for many years to come so long as her photo continues to be mounted on the wall in the main lobby.
What van Gogh produced benefited others long after his death. You can do something with the rest of your life so that you will be remembered as well. Do something to help others. I mean, to really help others, not to contribute cash so that others can help them.
That’s why we are here on this planet. That’s why we remember the helpful ones, those who benefit others, long aftger they are gone. True, we also remember the brutal killers, but they act as foils so that we know what is wrong and what people can do to go wrong. In their peculiar way, even the great perpetrators of genocide through history show us that we should not act like them, must prevent others like them from gaining power.
Help someone. Help someone up, not out. Those we consider failures today don’t want to be failures. Some desperately want to improve their lot in life, but don’t know how. They don’t have one person who really cares for their welfare and their future. Many have given up on their own future, which leads others to believe they like living their present lifestyle. No, they just quit fighting.
Theo van Gogh only gave his brother money, which allowed Vincent to paint. But if Vincent had been given care and help by someone with his life, what might he have accomplished during his lifetime?
We don’t have answers to these questions. All we can do is to look ahead to what we can accomplish with the rest of our own lives. We can help others.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a common sense guidebook, in common language, for parents, teachers and others who want to help children grow to be all they can be. It’s for people who care and want to make a difference in the world.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

You Can Do It

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.
- Helen Keller (1880-1968)

The irony of a blind woman advising people to look the world straight in the face delighted me. Helen Keller certainly did.

Blind and deaf from the age of 19 months, she went from being a fully sensitive baby to a young child that could feel, smell and taste, but had no other method to gather information about her world during her most critical formative years. She became as much as most of us could imagine a wild child to be. In effect, she was an uncaged animal who hurt herself as well as anyone who tried to help her.

Yet she became a college graduate, lecturer and writer who was especially well known for her inspirational work and her championing of the cause of deaf and blind people. While she could neither hear nor see? Yes, without any ability to see or hear through the senses we normally associate with these functions.

A home-school teacher, Anne Sullivan (1866-1936), brought Helen out of the abyss that was her life, taught her how to learn from others and to communicate with them. Anne became Helen's companion for life. Sadly, Anne died before Keller reached the height of her fame and consequently she received far more attention and praise for her miraculous work after her death than before. Anne taught Helen, Helen taught the world.

Helen Keller told us all to hold our heads high. That doesn't mean that we should ignore our weaknesses or the dark events that happen around us. It means that we should look beyond them to see the objectives we want to achieve.

Many of us get bogged down with the problems of our days. Relatively small problems take huge shapes and unsettle us far more than they should. In fact, most of those problems will have been forgotten a few years after they seemed so unmanageable to us. Helen says that we should treat them with the respect they deserve: attention, but not emotion. Work through the problems and get past them to push on with the rest of our lives.

How does a deaf and blind woman go through college, become an inspiring speaker and a well known writer? Were people impressed simply because she could speak and write although she was blind and deaf? And a woman at that, having grown up in a time when women couldn't even vote?

Helen Keller didn't usually dwell on her problems or her accomplishments in public. She just kept telling people that their problems would pass and that they could make more of themselves if they believed they could. That, more than anything else, was the reason she became famous.
She inspired everyone to do better. She persisted with that message and the world listened.
They liked what they heard so much that they came to look past her physical impediments. She wasn't just as good as any normal person, she was better than any normal person because she not only improved herself but she inspired so many others to grow themselves into better people.

That was enough. Go and do likewise.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children what they need to know to become competent and confident adults who don't succumb to their problems.
Learn more at http://billallin.com