Seven of Cups

The first impression that this card evokes is one of ideas still up in the air, not yet manifest. It reminded me of a great figure in human history, Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vinci was one of the greatest minds that ever lived. He delved into engineering, art, sculpture, medicine, alchemy and religion. Responsible for some of the best art ever produced, as well as many inventions that were way before their time.

To protect himself much of his work was in code because the church was too powerful and could not be challenged. He would no doubt have been treated as a heretic if the church knew what he was capable of.

Da Vinci had all these ideas, some say that he was born in the wrong century as the restrictions placed on him by the church as well as the lack of materials needed prohibited many of his ideas from being developed further. For example the glider that he invented, if the engine had already been invented by then he might have invented the first airplane. He was undoubtedly ahead of his time. It is a known fact that it was only much later, when mankind had invented more that we could use a lot of his ideas.

Da Vinci might not have been able to invent the airplane yet, but he did what he could, he painted the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, amongst other.

The lesson that we can derive from this concept, inspired by the Seven of Cups tarot card is that we should all strive to become the Leonardo da Vinci instead of having many ideas but doing nothing with them, realizing that some of our ideas might not come to anything we should none-the-less work with the ones we can and do something with them so that others can benefit from the workable ideas that we do have. Perhaps we can’t invent the parachute when we don’t yet have the airplane, but we can paint the Mona Lisa because her smile will inspire generations to come…

So, if we have 10 ideas and 7 of these are unworkable or ahead of their time, we should focus on the 3 that we can do something with now. We should perfect or do something with the ones that we can instead of leaving them all up in the air.

In closing we hear the words of Nolan Bushnell who said:

Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.