Why Settle for the Butt End?

     He was such a failure in art classes that teachers relegated him to draw the butt side of female models. (The talented students earned the more interesting angle.) He continued to get the butt end in life, suffering from psychotic episodes that led to hospitalization. When he died in poverty at age thirty-seven, he was considered a madman and a failure. His name?            
    Vincent Van Gogh - now esteemed as one of the most influential figures in art. But in his time - unrecognized. 
    I wonder what it would have done for Van Gogh if recognition had not been delayed.
    Which prompts me to want to give all the masters around me their due now. All the masters in cooking and cleaning and raising kids and serving bosses and paying bills and guarding crosswalks and crunching numbers and writing code.
    I’m amazed at the response I get when I tell someone, “You make my life better by the way you fill in the blank.”  Or, “I love how you fill in the blank.”
​   Such a little thing, yet recognition fills our tanks and keeps us rolling down life’s highway. After all, we are all masters at something.
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   Image: "Self Portrait with Felt Hat" by artist.
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