won’t accomplish. This is the work of an artist who bravely
steps into their field with bold aspirations, while recognizing
the work will never be finished. To paraphrase Leonardo da
Vinci, we can never complete the task. We only abandon
it.^3 The challenge for any artist—and we are all creating
something on the canvas of our lives—is to do our work
well while letting go of the result. If we don’t do this, we
may very well drive ourselves and those around us crazy.
And that’s the real tragedy—not that we leave this world
with work unfinished, but that the work robs us of the life
we could have lived. The right choice isn’t to retire, to
simply settle in and invite death. It’s to work hard and
passionately, but acknowledge the limitations of what one
life is capable of.
The Message of Your
Deathbed
Albert Einstein, on his deathbed, asked for his glasses so he
could continue working on a project he believed would be
his greatest work of all. He was not interested in mere
phenomena anymore. He wanted, as he put it, “to know
God’s thoughts.”^4 Everything else was details.
This “theory of everything,” as it came to be known, was
based on Einstein’s belief that physics was an “expression