The Damage We Do with Short-Term Thinking
A few years ago, I was speaking at a conference in Milan, Italy. I was excited to eat incredible pizza, pasta, and gelato by the gallon. I was also looking forward to seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper.
The Last Supper is a fresco painted on the wall of the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery. The painting measures fifteen feet tall and almost twenty-nine feet wide. Its estimated value is $450 million.
Painted in 1495, The Last Supper has survived floods, invasions, the French Revolution, and the bombings of WWII. Sadly, the greatest damage inflicted on the masterpiece happened at the hands of the monks living at the monastery. And they did it intentionally, all for the sake of convenience.
The Cost of Convenience
The monks needed a new dining hall and chose the room with The Last Supper on the wall. In order to make mealtime more efficient, the monks cut a doorway between the dining hall and the kitchen so they’d have easier access. The new doorway removed a four-foot wide section of The Last Supper, damaging the fresco forever.
The Last Supper today
It seems unimaginable that someone would intentionally destroy something so valuable, but how often do we do the same?
The monks weren't villains. They were busy people solving a practical problem, focused on what was immediately in front of them. They needed a door. They cut a door. It probably took an afternoon.
What they didn't do was step back and ask: what are we about to lose forever?
That's the question short-term thinking never stops to ask.
I think about the monks whenever I'm tempted to trade something irreplaceable for something convenient. The evening I skip with my kids because work ran long. The health habit I abandon because discipline is uncomfortable today. The relationship I neglect because it doesn't feel urgent — until it does.
None of those feel like cutting a hole through a masterpiece. They feel like small, reasonable decisions. They feel like afternoon errands.
But over time, small cuts add up. And some things, once damaged, can never be fully restored.
Da Vinci's masterpiece has survived floods, wars, and centuries of neglect. The one thing it couldn't survive was the monks with a practical problem and a short-term solution.
The masterpieces in your life are more fragile than you think. And the people swinging the chisel rarely look like vandals.
They look like you and me, just trying to get through the day.
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