I was finally going to Europe, and one thing mattered enormously to me: I was going to see Michelangelo’s David.

I had prepared. Before the trip I read The Agony and the Ecstasy—no small feat, because it is a very thick book. By the time I arrived in Florence, I felt as though I had been waiting a very long time for this meeting.

The big day came.

I queued with everyone else, moving in mincing little steps through a dimly lit hallway, passing other works by Michelangelo along the way.

Eventually we reached a turn. Right for a few steps, then right again, beginning down another long hall.

And there he was.

Far in the distance, above a sea of heads, David stood beneath that magnificent light-filled structure, gleaming white.

I caught my breath.

And suddenly there were tears in my eyes.

I am not someone who unexpectedly tears up at the sight of something beautiful. It had never happened to me before, and it hasn’t happened since.

But it happened there.

Perhaps that is why I have never forgotten those first few seconds. Before I could get close enough to study him, before I could think about Michelangelo or marble or everything I had read, something in me had already responded.

I had waited years to see David.

I hadn’t expected him to see straight through me.