I've been quiet for a time. Busy.
But also noodling on how to move my worries into a constructive,
positive effort to help define and resolve some of the social issues
before us all.
It is easy to find the issues of our impaired environment and our foot
dragging on coming to grips with how health care will inevitably become
our largest economic and ethical issue. It is easy to turn to black
humor about which wil kill us - global warming, a mutated virus plague,
the complexity of heath care choice or the race to spend our way to
"ethical" health care.
But what is a constructive, positive effort?
Is there one?
Yes.
We will make heart rending choices.
The eagle will disappear. As will the bear - polar as well as black.
The oceans fester. The global dimming will either save us from global
warming (yet we die of famine) or it doesn't and we find out whether Al
Gore's vision is gloomy enough. We come to live on corn rather than oil.
And we learn to make these heart rending choices with deliberate
practice.
A
Star Is Made
Freakonomics
By STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT
Published: The New York Times on May 7, 2006
...And the best way to learn how to
encode information meaningfully, Ericsson determined, was a process
known as deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task [~] playing
a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until
your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting
specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much
on technique as on outcome.
Their work, compiled in the "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert
Performance," a 900-page academic book that will be published next
month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call
talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers [~]
whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming [~] are
nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect.
These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of
whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just
happen to be true.
Ericsson's research suggests a third cliché as well: when it
comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love [~] because if
you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very
good. Most people naturally don't like to do things they aren't "good"
at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don't possess
the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack
is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that
would make them better.
- The trait we commonly call
talent is highly overrated
- expert performers are
nearly always made, not born
- practice does make perfect
- when it
comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love
because if
you don't love it,
you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very
good.
To
Build The Life You Want, Create The
Work You Love
Gradually I realized that, despite
obstacles, such plucky souls possessed a mode of thinking and working
that let them live the traditional [base "]American dream" (even though some
of the letters came from Asia, Canada, Australia, and Europe). They had
built their lives on the solid ground of genuine interests, meanings,
and values. They demonstrated old-fashioned virtues: thrift; hard work;
pride of workmanship; love of service and community; seemed to work for
something larger than self. They committed themselves to and invested
in their talents. They seemed to work for something larger than
self.... The main premise of this book is that authentic occupational
success is tied to healthy human development and that its seminal
demand is spiritual growth - our cultivation of those inner gifts and
forces that renew and animate our creative energies[sigma].
We live in a lesson-world: Its problems can help us grow. Our desire to
have someone else give us work, define our life[base ']s role, or tell us when
and how to do things is an avoidance of the highest order [^] a obvious
shirking of mature responsibility. Every generation has its share of
hardships to surmount: One of our era[base ']s assignments is to manage
tumultuous change. Another is to cultivate the highest self-awareness
that transcends the idea that our good [^] and [base "]the good life[per thou] [^] comes
from without. I propose a radical, yet ancient, notion: To build the
life you want [^] complete with inner satisfaction, personal meaning and
rewards [^] create the work you love. By this I mean invent a way to earn
an income doing what you do best, while serving others, becoming
authentic, fulfilling the highest standards of your vocation. This is
spiritual work. It[base ']s life[base ']s assignment. And most of us are
well-equipped to do it.
from Introduction,
Marsha Sinetarpyright @ 1995,
St. Martin's Griffin ~ New York,
ISBN
0-312-14141-6
So the question is
what do we love enough to save ourselves?
(no, not one thing we all do
thousands of things that we all do part of)
Oddly enough, I have a story that might help jump start this
"conversation."
more later....
9:26:31 PM 
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