The block of granite had all the potential in the world...

It was 1501. Columbus was preparing for his fourth voyage in his rediscovery of the New World, the future Henry VIII was a young teenager in England, and Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were dueling geniuses in Italy.

This was an unusually superb block of granite. It was brought to Florence, Italy and towered just over twenty-six feet. All it needed was the skill of a master sculptor.

It so happened that Michelangelo was in another city working on another commission at the time, so enter one Maestro Simone da Fiesole. Commissioned by the wardens of a Florence cathedral, Fiesole began his work in the 1490s. He set out to sculpt a giant. This did not go well. He hacked a hole between the legs, and mishit in so many different areas with such an ill-conceived plan, that this incredible block of granite was reduced to a misshapen mass of ruin.

It was dumped in the yard of the cathedral and there gathered time.

Michelangelo caught wind of this massive and magnificent stone and the torture it had endured at the hands of Fiesole. Such a great stone is to a sculptor like an idea is to a writer or a daunting mountain is to a climber...a great challenge and a grand opportunity all at once. This kind did not come along very often. He traveled home to take a look.

He was shown to the yard where the granite lay undisturbed since its brutal scarring. The genius looked it over. He spent time with the block...studied it. He saw it for what it was...and then he began to envision something new. Whereas most saw a mess that one sculptor had given up on, Michelangelo saw...possibility.

Florence was a small, turbulent republic that large nations constantly played catch with in their game of empire. She was a lesser pawn, a comparatively insignificant relic that others rode roughshod over and laid waste on their way to something bigger and better. She was a petty nuisance really.

Michelangelo meditated on this block and began to envision-out of this agonizing, mistake-filled, clumsy piece of rock-a statement for his beloved city. He envisioned the underdog's underdog.

In 1501 he set to work. And in 1504 he unveiled one of the most famous statues in the history of man...indeed his masterpiece...David.

Mistakes are fuel to the great, obstacles to the weak. To hate mistakes is to disdain glory and despise success...even when the mistakes are somebody else's.