The Art of Life

Google the "art of life" and you'll find pages and pages of meditative advice, religious dogma, and spiritual ideals. Those whose strivings are more secular in nature could potentially appreciate John Maynard Keynes' essay which in brief talks about how the world economy is developing so quickly that by 2028, most of life's basic tasks will be automated and humans will pretty much be out of jobs. That leaves us with hours of recreational time which can be a fearful problem for reasons I'll let him articulate. Yet we're not less busy, in fact we've fallen into this "busier than thou" mentality that cripples any enjoyment of true leisure. We grow up, we learn stuff, we teach our little humans how to be human, and the cycle continues. I'd like to argue that the art of life is really about "becoming" and that there is no limit to what we can become.

So what do we become?

My senior year of high school I signed up for an upper level math class. Calculus. Within the first week it became apparent that I did not have the proper mathematical foundation to succeed in that class. I couldn't tell you what a function was, or the difference between an independent and dependent variable, much less understand the basic structure of a derivative. So for the rest of that year my dad worked with me well past midnight on assignments, helping me understand and drill in basic concepts. There were a lot of tears, but a lot of good moments too.

Before that year I was "bad at math." Now, I'm "good at math."

That idea doesn't stop there. The summer before college, my dad, who draws better than I do, bought "Keys to Drawing" by Bert Dodson to augment his skills. It turned out to be a great beginner book too because I jumped on and soon began learning how to draw and how to see. I would draw for hours.

I received some formal training later, but before I picked up that book, I was "bad at drawing." Now I'm "good at drawing."

There's this misperception that your natural talent dictates who you are and what you can do. The problem is, you can't really know what you're "naturally talented" at until you put in some work. Ben Haggerty said, "The greats weren't great because from birth they could paint, the greats were great because they painted a lot."

What if jobs and the tasks associated with them were to disappear? We spend a lot of time classifying and defining ourselves based on our majors, our talents, our occupations. A lot of times that's derived from pursuing what we're good at, and that's cool. Sometimes what we're good at is what makes us happy. I believe, however, that the art of life means pursuing what we might not think we're good at and becoming good at it... simply because we're interested and we like it.

There are no limits. Except in calculus, but even then sometimes it doesn't exist.

Love \\ Christelle