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Some people are enormously talented … and then there is Leonardo da Vinci. He lived at a time when there were many extremely talented people all around him. Even so, he stood out.
He could draw and paint better than anyone. One of his paintings, the Mona Lisa , is the most famous painting in the world. He was a scientist hoping to unlock the secrets of the natural world. He was an engineer and inventor. He designed a bicycle that would have worked—three hundred years before the first bike was actually built.
He was an excellent athlete. A fine musician. And he was handsome. (Although there are no known paintings of him, whenever people of the day described him, they always mentioned his good looks.)
“I want to work miracles,” he stated. Yet he often met with failure. And while he could be charming, he mistrusted almost everyone. He was a loner. He had no family of his own. For sixteen years, he didn’t even have a home of his own.
By his own standards, Leonardo was a disappointment. He never reached the goals he set for himself. His greatest works were left unfinished. Nevertheless, what he did achieve in sixty-seven years still sets the standard for human excellence. It is hard to imagine someone doing better.