Skilled and unskilled suckers

In my head, I have been able to imagine music and as a result, I think I would have been a decent musician. I always fantasized about being a jazz pianist or perhaps a trumpet player, but other than a couple lessons when I was around seven years of age, I have not spent anytime at all developing any musical skill. While I do not consider it to late to learn something, I am not willing nor do I have the time or money to sink into lessons and the copious amounts of practice it takes. Plus, it is much easier to just imagine having skills.

I do have other skills that are an advantage to have though including the ability to write relatively well, and while I am unlikely to ever win a prize for my material, it is likely at a higher level than the average is able to ever put out. In many ways, I see this as much like jazz music too as while I am not completely unread, I get to spend time developing my thoughts.

This could be an advantage in a future creative world where the ability to process thoughts is seen as having value. It has value now too of course, it is just that most people are encouraged to learn and share the thoughts of others and for the most part, they don't even need to act upon them to get the advantage. It is a kind of virtue signalling or like those pompous gits who can quote obscure texts yet, have never produced something that is uniquely theirs.

I think the willingness to be different is also driven in this as people are taught to share what they consume and when they read the popular or clever, they feel that they already know what is correct, and if one knows what is correct, why keep thinking about it? The problem here is that even if one knows they are correct, what good is it unless they are able to adequately act upon it?

This is some kind of resource issue also because we have access to so much information and so much of it is in short form that we feel we know, and before we would have time to think about it, our attention gets pulled by the next shiny bauble of information. You know those people who know so much yet struggle to make ends meet, struggle to hold a job, struggle to have healthy relationships? What do they really know? The text book life, the knowledge gained via proxy without the experience or skill to be able to apply it.

They are much like those teachers that tell children to follow their dreams, to work hard and they will achieve their goals. Was it their dream to be a teacher or, did they just not work hard enough? I do know teachers who aimed to be teachers and worked to be in that position of couse but, how many people in this world have a career they actually dreamed of? Well, that means they didn't work hard enough at their dreams then.

Of course, there are many other factors involved that affect this and the sad reality is that regardless of the dreams we might have and even if we have the work ethic to achieve them, there still needs to be access to the resources to achievement. Many do not have those resources available to them.

When I was a young child, I was given the option to quit playing the piano after a couple months, I took it. This option wasn't given to my older brothers and the reason that I was given it wasn't because of care, it was because my mother wanted to move on with her life after divorcing and didn't have the time for my hobbies. As a seven year old, I had no idea I would come to regret the decision later, I was just glad to not have to go to practice every Wednesday and sit next to Mrs Noack, a very old and talented piano teacher.

What if my actual calling was to be a jazz pianist? Well, that is just silly isn't it, as what is a true calling? While we are all suited to various things by nature and nurture, we are not bound by them and we can live very good lives without having the perfect career, or the perfect looks, thoughts, body, intelligence, skills. What it comes down to though is the willingness to participate and, accept our own flaws and still have enough curiosity and energy to keep improving. This also means that if for some reason we lose the ability to do what we love, we can find new loves to love.

This might be the biggest problem with the person who knows it all but fails to act upon it time and time again, the improvement potential is not there because to improve, one has to experience and likely make mistakes in judgement to build better judgement. If the lessons from the music book stay unapplied, can one actually hear the music of the notes or, is it a fool's imagination altering the emotions to make it feel like one knows, that one is skilled?

I think a lot of online life is designed to support this kind of behavior as it gamifies and manipulates to make people feel knowledgeable and skilled without actually having to build any skill set whatsoever. No wonder so many people find it hard to have a work ethic because in their experience, getting skilled is as easy as reading an article or two they found through a Twitter feed.

Getting real skills sucks.
It sucks time, energy, money and of course, the opportunity to do other things.

Who are the suckers in this life?
Maybe you read the answer on a Twitter, Facebook or an Instagram post.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]