Connecting Dots Thread #5 - What do you want to be when you grow up?

Oct 31, 2024

What do you want to be when you grow up?’ We ask children this question as if life were a straight line, as if finding one’s calling were as simple as following a pre-mapped route. History, however, tells a different story.

The boy was born into an upper-middle-class family. His mother, who appreciated music and art, taught him drawing, but he destroyed his artwork and refused to try again. Instead, he spent much of his childhood wandering in the Netherlands.

At thirteen, he entered a new school. He received little artistic education there and felt uneasy around strangers. Two years later, he left school and began wandering in nature again, taking long walks every day for the next sixteen months.

He knew this lifestyle wasn’t sustainable, but he didn’t know what to do next or what his calling was. Thankfully, his uncle, a successful art dealer, offered him a job in the big city. He transferred his love of observing nature toward art, photography, and illustration. By age 20, he had become talented and began dealing with several important clients, earning more than his father. However, he refused to bargain about prices, which caused tension between him and his uncle. Three years later, he was dismissed and became a supply teacher at a small school.

He drifted through various jobs: teacher, bookstore clerk. He even wanted to enter university to train as a pastor. At 27, ten years after starting as an art dealer, he had no possessions, accomplishments, or direction. Later that year, he began to draw. Despite multiple struggles with traditional art school, feelings of being left behind, lack of accomplishment, and various sources of depression, he finally found his means of expression one day when he took an easel and oil paints – with which he had almost no experience – to a sand dune in a storm.

I was fascinated when I first read Vincent van Gogh’s story. He moved between different careers: art dealer, teacher, bookseller, prospective pastor, and itinerant catechist. He started his artistic journey in his late twenties and was dismissed by others who said, “You are no artist, you started too late.” But none of these critics could imagine that the artist they criticized would single-handedly become one of the most influential artists in the world.

History is interesting in the way that we never know how things will unfold until they do. This story gives me faith that no exploration is wasted. A thoughtful person can draw lines from different angles and connect them to form a brand new understanding of their own life.

There is no such thing as “You are too late.” I firmly believe this.