transcript, thank you legrande
Still worried. 🙁 Here’s my mitzvah for the day if you want to use it.
(I made slight edits for flow.)
DILETTANTE OR MASTER? 9/29/18
(I’m not used to doing audio blogs. If no one’s listening, it’s hard for the words to come. It’s hard to be silently brilliant but it’s also hard to be brilliant when no one’s listening)
Yesterday I went out to my daily walk. Two doors down from where I live, there is a park where people bring their dogs. I see a dude with two dogs and at some point, the dogs start towards me. One of them–a big one–jumps on me. I lost my balance. I think I tripped on my own leg and started to fall. To break my fall (because I was falling smack towards the curb), I held out my hand which is a no-no for me because I pretty much would rather die than not be able to work.
I broke my hand. I cut my arm and have this huge bruise on my forehead–but no concussion. I will look funny for a couple of weeks but my head is okay. I had some major nausea afterwards (which indicates that it wasn’t that easy on my head).
I couldn’t fall asleep till 4 am or whatever it was. It was so painful. I decided twenty years of not taking headache medication was enough. I took some headache medication for my arm. I then I had the good idea to use a piece of wood to stabilize my arm. I didn’t go to a doctor. The owner of the dogs offered but I don’t have insurance. Going to the emergency room is out of my budget (I don’t know how much it costs but anything is beyond my budget).
So I’m here–it’s the next day. I’m already drinking my second cup of coffee. I am having lots of insights about not having use of my left arm for typing, making coffee, wearing any clothes, going to the bathroom…all very interesting.
One of the insights is “how you do anything is how you do everything.” That is pretty much about your attitude.
My attitude is I am 100% responsible for everything that happens to me. I won’t press charges against the dog owner–he may be legally responsible but that is not my problem, that’s his. It’s my life and I’m going to take care of it.
That is my relationship to life, that I am responsible for all of it–which means it is my job to be well, no matter what happens to me.
On the surface, I may not be well. I am in pain. I don’t have use of my left arm blah blah blah. Yet, I pretty much can do anything I need to do. Maybe not anything that I want to do–for example, I can’t touch type because you need two hands for that.
This morning, I used an Italian espresso machine. In order to use it, you need to look and see what part of your biology can replace another hand. Are you going to use your face, your chin, your thighs, your knees…what are you going to do?! How are you going to make life seamless, even though something is taken from you?
The interesting thing is the more skills you have in something–anything, the more skills you have in life. But when I watch people, they are not skilled in anything. They are not good at anything. Honestly.
So why aren’t they good at anything? Because they never considered that taking something to the level of mastery is how they can be responsible for their life. They do things but they never consider practicing it or changing how they do it until they are masterful at it. It could be anything: how you change your bed sheets, how you do your laundry, how you chop onions, how you cook, how you make coffee…anything. Because if something happens, you are shit out of luck because now you are completely unable to live life.
This gist of what I want to say: the attitude of bringing excellence. Unless you take it to mastery, you don’t have anything.
For example, I used to have this workshop–the StrengthsFinder workshop from “What Color is Your Parachute?” It helped people to see what skills they already have so that they can build on that. You find skills through stories of projects that you were successful at and enjoyed doing. I worked with 30, 40 people and I haven’t found not even one person who really mastered any skill.
You are satisfied with so-so and of course, your results are so-so.
Your life is so-so.
You come to me hoping for a better life without changing your relationship to life. You don’t change your “how you anything is how you do everything” attitude.
Amazing.
They call the person who has some sense of how to do something a dilettante, which is a French word for amateur.
Dilettante: a person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge.
Dilettante is a state of development where you don’t put enough energy, enough care or enough conscious learning to become an expert. And then you want to live the life of an expert with a dilettante skillset.
That’s what I wanted to say. I’ll be making more of these audio blogs throughout the day.
note: it i skill-finder, not strength finder. fundamental difference
