Have you ever heard of a man named Antoni Gaudí? From his name alone, one gets the impression of something grand and imposing—a man who likely walked about with a face that shouted, “I am a genius!” In truth, however, he was quite the eccentric character. Walk through the streets of Barcelona, and suddenly, a monstrous structure looms before you like a phantom. The Sagrada Família. Just hearing the name makes one’s stomach feel a bit heavy, doesn’t it? After all, they’ve been building it for over a hundred years and still haven’t finished.
Ordinarily, things should have a point of completion. In a novel, once the final line is written, that’s the end of it. The reader is free to cry or laugh as they please. Yet, this man Gaudí refuses to let his work end even in death. He possesses such tenacity that one might suspect his ghost is still out there, stacking stones at the construction site. Of course, the way he actually left this world—hit by a tram and mistaken for a beggar—carries a touch of wretched absurdity and pathos that is almost beyond saving.
However, if you gaze steadily at what he left behind, a strange thing happens. You feel as though the impurities deep within your chest are being slowly washed away. In Gaudí’s architecture, there are almost no cold, straight lines of the sort drawn with a ruler. Instead, there are only undulating curves and distorted, cave-like spaces. He once said, “The straight line belongs to men, the curved one to God.” When I first heard this, I nearly struck my knee in agreement. Indeed, what the world calls “correctness” is always angular and tends to wound us. But look at the natural world: you won’t find a perfect straight line discarded anywhere. Clouds, trees, waves, and even our own groveling hearts—everything is twisted and curved.
Gaudí loved the hills and fields of Catalonia; he sat and observed lizards, beehives, and the shape of corn, then reflected those forms directly into his stone buildings. Turning his back on the sophisticated tastes of the city, he found truth in the earthy shapes of nature. It is easy to call this “originality,” but behind it lay a dizzying loneliness and a devotion bordering on madness. He remained single his entire life, and in his later years, he cared nothing for his appearance, struggling solely with the models of his basilica. He was a man who did not desire even a dewdrop’s worth of worldly glory.
We are always greedy for immediate results. We want to lose weight in a week, get rich in a month, or write a masterpiece overnight. Such shallow desires swirl constantly in our heads. But look at Gaudí. He drew his blueprints fully aware that the Sagrada Família would not be finished while his eyes remained open. He believed in the strength of a “completion beyond the horizon of time,” where future generations would take up the baton and build slowly. Is this not precisely the virtue that we in the modern age have most forgotten?
There is a house he built called Casa Batlló. It has a roof like the back of a dragon from a fairy tale, and window frames that look like bones. It is eerie, to be sure, but there is a pulse of life within it. Though it is a mass of static stone, it overflows with a raw energy that suggests it might start breathing at any moment. He sought to breathe life into stone. This was not merely a matter of technique; it was proof of how deeply he loved the “living things” of this world.
Come to think of it, perhaps our lives are also like unfinished basilicas. Nothing is accomplished in a single day; we are far from our ideals, and we spend all our time fiddling with the foundations while the towers never seem to grow taller. That is perfectly fine. To be unfinished means there is still room for “hope” to be piled up. I feel as though Gaudí, through his life, is telling us: “Do not hurry; beauty is something that grows with time.”
If you ever feel despair over your own lack of talent, or feel like collapsing by the roadside because you cannot keep up with the speed of the world, please remember those rugged, strange towers rising into the Barcelona sky. They are the shape of an endless promise made between a clumsy man, God, and himself. Even if it is never finished, there are things that save people simply by existing. Imagine the color of the setting sun pouring over that stone framework. Just that thought makes one feel as though they can forgive their own awkwardness and keep living tomorrow.
I am certain that even in heaven, Gaudí is still redrawing his plans. I can see him now, annoying the angels as he lectures them, saying, “No, this curve should look more like a lizard’s tail.” He is a troublesome man, to be sure, but it is precisely that thorough eccentricity that makes this tedious world a little more interesting, and a little more beautiful.