Relent Not.

NPR kindly informed me on my way in to work
this morning that Paulo Mendes da Rocha was awarded this years Pritzker Prize for architecture.
I won't sit here and pretend that I knew who Mendes daRocha was before 8:15 this morning, or that I remembered exactly what the Pritzker prize was. Nevertheless the story got me thinking - not so much about the prize itself, but about blind faith and devotion.
In the peice, Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic for The New York Times says. "And one thing I like about him is he has always been true to values… There’s a strain of brutalism, but also nature, indoor, outdoor, as in L.A., Brazil, but he stayed true to those values all way through."
Mendes da Rocha is not a young man - I believe they said he was in his seventies - so he has had a long life of relentless adherance to his own vision. That's the hard part, isn't it? The relentlessness. It is one thing to have your vison, but quite another to act on it, fail, and act on it again.
That, and the fact that you can never go about anything with the intention of winning. (Beef & Salt what kind of anti-competitive fascist are you?) Wait. It's true - it's not about the winning but about the doing. Do. Just do (yeah, I'm talking to you Beef). You can't possibly start off your life with the final goal being the Nobel, or the Pritzker or whatever. Once you succeed it's over - kind of like scarfing down a whole meal wiothout having chewed a bite of it.
Anyways, congratulations Paulo.