The Power of Foresight

I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.

—Henry David Thoreau,
essayist

When the great Michelangelo began as an apprentice sculptor, his teacher made him work in a quarry for several months, just breaking and chipping rocks. He learned how rocks broke apart, how they chipped, what they did under pressure. Then when he began to actually make sculptures, Michelangelo understood how to work with stone. Before he began each new piece, he studied the stone he was going to use. He studied what happened to it when it was cut. He studied where it could be cut and where it would break. Before he ever took chisel in hand, he understood the rock.

Before Michelangelo began to sculpt his great David, he sculpted it in his mind. He knew exactly what he wanted David to look like. He knew David's proportions, his curves, his angles, his stance, his expression. Michelangelo saw it all in his mind's eye.

Then he began to sculpt. He started with a solid block of marble. Because he had studied, he knew the secrets of the stone. He looked at that rough rectangle of solid stone and saw the vision of David he had created in his mind. Then, he said, he chipped away everything that was not David.

Michelangelo saw David so clearly that he made that marble yield to his plan. Was every chip perfect? Probably not. Did he make mistakes or have to make adjustments as he went along? I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing he did. Whatever happened, though, could not erase that vision of David from his mind.

Thid is foresight. It is looking ahead with a clear vision—the ability to have a clear idea of what the future will look like, even before it is reality. It's not magic or fortune telling. It's having a clear concept of what you want your life to look like, directing your actions toward that vision, and then chipping away everything that isn't helping you create that picture.

Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slave of the ordinary.

—Cecil Beaton,
photographer