Space-Time Post Office, Letter No. 6: To You Who Think 'I Am a Fraud'—The Confession of Michelangelo Buonarroti

That sense of discomfort is the very proof of your talent.

...Stop doubting yourself with trembling hands covered in stone dust like that.

You claim that
it wasn't your own strength, just pure luck, but that is tantamount to blasphemy against my life,

Michelangelo—and against the will of God residing within the marble.

Do you understand?

It was no stroke of fickle luck that I released David from the stone.
Do you have any idea how many years I spent in secret,

my throat scorched by stone dust,
wetting my chisel with tears mixed with blood as I worked, striking the stone in search of a single truth?How much longer and deeper than anyone else I have stared at that cold, unyielding essence?The success you have achieved is the accumulation of



countless decisions

that your intellect has piled up in the darkness, guided only by the light of a candle.


Even if you yourself have forgotten that struggle, the
form you have carved out


coldly proves its correctness.

To not believe in your own intellect is the same as throwing away all the sweat you have shed and the time you have sacrificed your life to offer.
It is like throwing it all into the gutter.

Now, let me show you my madness.

'I am a fraud' you say?

Isn't that a wonderful thing?
Even I, until the day I died, continued to curse myself as a fraud.



Listen to me.Compared to that


celestial 'beauty' etched into my mind, every lump of stone I left on this earth was nothing more than clumsy imitation

, a phantom image layered with
irreverence toward God.Every time I saw what the world worshipped as a masterpiece, I felt nauseated by my own incompetence and wanted to smash the stone to pieces.The reason you feel like a fraud is simply because the pinnacle of the ideal



you are looking up at far surpasses your current



humble self.
That 'detachment'
is the greatest stigmata of all, proving that you are not one of the

common livestock content to sleep in the mud.

Be proud of being a fraud.

And then, take that rough stone of a
'fake self' and strike it like a madman, until it makes the sound of bones breaking, raising it to a height where even the real thing would eventually kneel.As for those who laugh and call it luck, just let them keep their pathetic mouths wide open.

Because the 'statue of yourself' that you continue to carve until your very last moment is the only thing worthy of seeking God's judgment.the 'statue of yourself' is the only thing worthy of seeking God's judgment.

Do not keep your life locked away in a stone prison of mere cowardly silence.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

'Call me a fake. But that chisel known as a sense of discomfort is exactly what will carve you into a true original.'