For my daughters’ 18th birthdays I got each of them a nice journal. Journaling has served me well and I hoped it might help them. I took the liberty of writing the first entry. Turning 18, they had both done well in high school, had accepted college offers, knew what they wanted to major in, and generally had an idea of what they wanted to do with that major. I took the opportunity to say how proud I was of them and how the world needed more people in their chosen professions (artist and health worker). I then ended with a quote which I felt was good advice for them.
My one daughter’s quote was as follows, and was my 3rd lecture’s parting thought:
“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
She was very much into tattoo’s and had been experimenting with the stick & poke technique. So yes, prison tattoos were being performed at our house. You cannot go to a tattoo artist in Minnesota until your 18, so she made an appointment for the evening of her birthday. She had drawn a simple animal figure which looked nice. However, when returning home she stated she had a last minute change of mind. Moved by the quote, her tattoo was “Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer. – Niccolo Machiavelli”. My reaction was that it was just a piece of advice, not meant to be permanently written on her body.
Over my years in professional services I was always taken aback at how many people were paralyzed by having to make a decision. Consultants get a bad wrap for not really doing anything, but in the end they typically have the ability to simply make decisions when so many people cannot. I feel there are too many people who choose to wallow in a suboptimal existence than to try to find the strength to put themselves on a path to a better place.
I also notice too many situations where no one wants to put a thought out there, but once one is developed most people seem to be fine with critiquing it. Almost as if the critiques are as valuable as the creation. Maybe I should learn from my artist daughter and put more value on the critique. A huge value of art school is the ability to provide feedback and take it. Critiquing is a large portion of the curriculum and the students get good at it.
