Van Gogh's Door

What do you do when every door is slammed in your face?

Vincent Van Gogh, arguably the world’s most famous and beloved artist, always considered himself a failure. If only he’d known what we know.

What makes a successful artist? Selling a painting for $184,000,000? Having your artwork as posters on the walls of college dorms worldwide? Being the subject of countless books? Having Kirk Douglas play you in a movie? By any measure, we see Van Gogh as the most brilliant of successes.

But from his point of view, without the benefit of our twenty-first century perspective, he was an epic failure. He failed at several careers—salesman, teacher, preacher—and he certainly did fail spectacularly in the department of romance. In his early days of attempting to become an artist, he stayed with his parents to save on rent. He was still only working on pencil and charcoal drawings, patiently trying to learn the basics, when an attractive young cousin, Kay Stricker, came on a visit. She was recently widowed, and the last thing on her mind was romance, but unfortunately Vincent fell for her, hard.

Being the emotional and passionate person that he was, he jumped in way too soon and proposed to her. Horrified, she turned him down not once but three times, crying "No, nay, never!"

She returned to her parents’ house in Amsterdam but, ever hopeful and clueless in his relationships, Vincent pursued her. He knocked on her door and brushed past the servant who opened it. Bursting into the dining room, he just missed Kay as she fled out of the room. Her father asked him to leave, but Vincent—according to his own account of the story—answered by putting his hand in a candle flame and begging to see Kay for as long as he could hold his hand in the fire.

Her horrified father, of course, blew out the candle and ordered him out of the house. The photo at the top of this page is the very doorway in Amsterdam where Vincent stumbled down the steps, miserable and defeated, certain he had failed again.

So Vincent van Gogh is a remarkable character, but what, you may ask, is the point of this story? Well, it seems to me that those of us who voted Blue feel a lot like Vincent these days. We gave it our all, put our hearts on the line, believed we could triumph—and got burned.

So, the age-old question: how to heal a broken heart? Vincent focused on learning how to paint. Almost everyone hated his work. He was told again and again that it was hopeless, that nothing would come of it. As far as he knew, he never did succeed. He died thinking he had failed.

If only he had known. If only he could see into the brilliant future: the fame, the adulation, an entire museum dedicated to his works, where art lovers line up for blocks in the rain, hoping to glimpse the multi-million-dollar paintings that he couldn’t give away in his lifetime. If only he’d known.

What will future generations say of the clown show that’s descending on Washington—the fools, the criminals, the tyrants? How will posterity judge them? How will they judge us, in the next century? We’ll never know.

Vincent tried to heal his broken heart by squeezing the first tubes of oil paint onto his palette. We can try to get our minds off disaster by doing something, taking some sort of action, however small: joining the ACLU. Checking out Indivisible’s ideas. My own plan for Inauguration Day: dusting off my local Little Free Library.

I like to think of Vincent, as he’s dabbing with a brush on canvas for the first time. We know what would come of it.

Dear Friends,

Are you worried about the state of the world and wondering what to do about it? I hope you’ll continue to check out The Optimistic Activist.

Every now and then I post some ideas for doing something. How to get out the vote, spread the word, and support progressive candidates. Ideas for simple but effective activism. As easy, as practical, as do-able as I can make them.

Together, I think, we can really make a difference.

“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future.”

--Noam Chomsky