Artists and writers, listen up. Scientists, you too. We all play nice here and this post is for both of you.
Looking for something to really help you open up and create a masterpiece? What about a clever trick that just might lead you to stunning scientific epiphanies? Are you ready?
Sfumato. Kind of sounds like a weird sort of tomato-fungus hybrid, doesn’t it? But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Sfumato can change your life.
Literally, sfumato means ‘to go up in smoke’. It is normally used to describe an Italian painting technique, most notably demonstrated by our pal Da Vinci and his Mona Lisa. The wispy thin layers of paint endlessly applied over each other created one of the most ambiguously beautiful images in our history. Sfumato is why this painting has become one of the most talked about icons of all time. Is she smiling? Smirking? Pregnant? Happy? Innocent? Seductive? What is her deal? The Mona Lisa personifies sfumato because we really have no idea what is going on with her.
But sfumato is more than just a paint technique.
In life, sfumato is the principle of accepting and embracing the unknown. It is seeing the paradoxes and contradictions – the gray areas, the smoky hazes and the veils between ideas. Da Vinci once said that the things in life that make us the most happy will also make us the most sad. That’s a paradox if I’ve ever heard one. To me, this is a lot like what Achilles says in Troy: “Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed.” Life is full of contradictory ideas like this. Joy/sorrow, journey/destination, good/evil, incubation/output, change/permanence, logic/imagination; we live with the tension between these ideas everyday, but we don’t really think about it. The principle of sfumato allows you to contemplate these ideas simultaneously, while accepting the fact that you just don’t know.
The Big, Bad Unknown
Typically, when faced with the unknown we get anxious. We freak out. We enter denial. We become control freaks, desperately trying to align our world in clean, right angles and tidy, colour coded boxes. But this is no way to view the world – at least not if you want to do something extraordinary. You must be willing to not know, which inherently means you are willing to absolutely fall on your arse and fail remarkably. When you start a new project, admit it – you have no idea where it may lead. You may create the next bestseller or the world’s heaviest paperweight – who knows? You might seek the cure for cancer and find it, or you might lead the way to something else or (just as remarkably) add to the pile of ten thousand ideas that don’t work. You just don’t know. Embrace that.
Why Sfumato Is Where It’s At
If you’re okay with the concept of uncertainty, you are open to more. More sights, more sounds, more tastes, more experiences, more ideas. If something comes at you when you’re hell bent on forcing certainty, the chances are good that you will miss it, because it wasn’t part of your plan. It might even bug you. If you are open to doubt, you are open to all sides – the yesses and the nos, the rights and the wrongs. Most importantly, if you are open to the unknown, you won’t miss your hunches. And hunches, my friend, are quite possibly your best opportunity for success, in work and life.
Say it with me. Sfumato.
Allow yourself the possibility of seeing things differently.
Yes, this post is ambiguous. See my point?
