A Morning with Leonardo da Vinci: If I Could Meet Any Historical Figure

If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

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Some questions feel simple until they knock on the door of your imagination and ask you to wander a little deeper.
Today’s prompt did exactly that.

“If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?”

At first, names flew through my mind like pages flipping in an old library — scientists, rulers, poets, freedom fighters. But one figure paused me… and stayed.

Leonardo da Vinci.

Not the painter.
Not the inventor.
Not the dreamer.
But the man who somehow managed to be all three — and so much more — in a world far less forgiving than ours.

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The Unexpected Meeting

In my mind, the meeting doesn’t happen in a grand palace or a busy Florentine workshop.
It happens in a quiet garden just before sunrise.

Mist hangs low.
Birds whisper instead of chirp.
And there he is — hunched over a sketchbook, drawing something that looks like a mix between a bird and a machine.

He doesn’t look up when I approach.
He simply gestures toward the empty space beside him, as if he expected me.

“You have questions,” he says.

I do.
But what tumbles out first is not what I rehearsed.

“How did you stay curious… even when no one understood you?”

He chuckles softly, as though curiosity itself is a mischievous child running barefoot through the garden.

“My dear friend,” he says, “the day you stop being curious is the day your world shrinks. And a shrinking world cannot hold big dreams.”

He returns to his sketch, adding lines so light they almost float off the page.

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A Conversation About Fear

I ask him about fear.
About doubt.
About the weight of big ideas in small rooms.

He closes the sketchbook then, finally meeting my eyes.

“Everyone fears,” he says. “But fear is a door. You may tremble as you open it, but you must open it all the same.”

His words settle into me like warm sunlight.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
But quietly transformative.

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Before He Leaves

As the sun begins to rise, the world around us sharpens.
The garden fills with color.
The air shifts.

Leonardo stands, tucks the sketchbook under his arm, and says, almost casually:

“Make. Create. Scribble. Fail. Try again. That is the only way to live more than one life.”

And just like that, he walks away — blending into the morning as if he was never there.

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Why Him?

Because Leonardo da Vinci represents something rare and timeless:
the courage to be endlessly curious in a world that prefers certainty.

And maybe that’s why I’d choose him.
Not to admire his genius…
but to borrow a little of his fearlessness.

At least for one morning in a misty garden.

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