The key to success

This title may seem appealing and make you dream, dear reader, of a revelation that will quickly solve your problems, but in reality, the key to achieving anything we set out to do is “patience.”

Wise men, writers, and philosophers of all times and places have agreed that this is a virtue through which we can reach wisdom, success, and fame. It is said in the books of proverbs and religions of Eastern and Western cultures.

Patience is the capacity that people have, or not, to remain calm in a tense situation or facing difficulties. It is not easy to control it: it must be exercised and requires self-control, concentration, and of course, time. That is why some people do not see patience as a positive value but as a weakness, an obstacle that only delays the moment of reaching an objective. However, this ability to wait is not resignation or apathy, nor a lack of commitment. It takes courage to reach the goal. And it is precisely an essential component in the world of fine arts and crafts: the work of the hands, the optimistic and promising expectation, and the passing of time to see the result.

Creation is combined with effort and perseverance in the craft of the artisan who works with the elements provided by his environment. He collects and waits for the vegetable fibers to dry before weaving them into baskets. Or he twists the wool strands to obtain the filament from which he will get the skeins with which, after the dyeing process, he will weave tapestries or blankets on his looms. Or the leatherworker with the slow process of tanning, washing, and dyeing the skins. The embossing and hammering of metals, the precise and laborious creation of musical instruments. The potter is awaiting the drying of the piece of clay to be fired and glazed.

As for the major arts, we observe the laborious effort of the sculptor who shapes the raw material with his tools until he can reveal what is hidden in it or the long and complex path of bronze casting from the original piece in clay or wood.

We tend to assume that painting is the one with the fastest results among the plastic arts, especially when we see in museums large patches of color filling the canvases -with no intention of detracting from the artist’s merits or his interpretation of reality-.

However, among the countless examples of pictorial works that require a great deal of dedication, we soon change our minds when we remember the detailed paintings of the

Flemish masters of the 15th and 16th centuries, or “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by El Bosco, with hundreds of fantastic characters, or the Pointillism of the 19th century, where thousands of tiny dots of color blur and become an image when seen from a distance.

We end with a Persian proverb: “Patience is a tree with bitter roots and sweet fruits.”