On learning

I really appreciate those who go out of their way to learn new things. They always find they learn much more than they ever anticipated. Thomas Keller, the celebrated American chef, tells a wonderful story of how he wanted to learn how to slaughter a rabbit. One day, he decided he wanted to try doing it himself and asked his purveyor to show him how. The purveyor demonstrates on the first rabbit. Then he leaves Keller to do the same with the remaining rabbits from the day’s order. Keller has trouble with his first one. There is suffering. It was a terrible experience. He had simply wanted to learn how to slaughter a rabbit. But he got a bonus lesson. He also learned much more about the true cost of the food that comes into his kitchen and now he takes much better care of his ingredients, knowing what it took to get them. Needless to say, waste is not tolerated in his kitchen. (Read the full story in his book, The French Laundry)

So go out and try to learn something new. You may just get more than you bargained for, but you won’t regret it.

When things become effortless, we stop paying attention

We place a very high premium on making things easy for ourselves. Staples capitalised on this, to great effect, with their ‘easy button’ campaign. Many of our goals, it seems, is to make things easy. But, as my mom firmly believes, everything comes with a cost. When we get things easy, there is a price to pay, and not just in monetary terms. The cost is that we learn nothing and we grow little, if at all.

If the Renaissance man ever met a man of our era (if you can even call it that), he’d be appalled and probably run back to his grave. Forget being able to do everything. Who wants to do that? I want to do nothing. That’s the voice of our generation.

When was the last time you sought out something difficult?

Decreasing marginal returns

That’s what you get when you work on a natural progression. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in letting things develop naturally. But natural development can only take you so far. The example I often use is that of strength training for athletes. Any converts of P90X will understand. If an athlete begins a strength training program, he or she will see fairly dramatic improvements at the onset. But if the athlete stays on the same program, the magnitude of the improvements will become gradually smaller. Sooner or later, the athlete will plateau and see very little improvement, regardless of how much time is invested in training. That’s because the muscles become familiar with the movements and feel less challenged each time. They figure, “I’ve seen this before, I know what to expect,” and don’t work as hard. They grow comfortable. And growth slows to a crawl, if not a complete stop. The only way to address this is to change things up. Challenge the muscles with new movements and force them to become uncomfortable, force them to learn new things.

It’s like that with us too. If we allow ourselves to become comfortable, the pace of our personal growth slows down considerably. We go through the same motions over and over again. Activities become mindless. Weeks and months fly by, and with them, our lives. We look around and wonder “Wow, where did all that time go?”

agendas vs. accomplishments

a lot of us have agendas. we set and manage to-do lists, and we do our best to follow them. some of us know exactly what we plan to do for the coming day down to the minute.

but amidst all of the various tasks on our schedules, how many meaningful things do we actually accomplish?

have you ever had the feeling, upon reflecting on the day that has just passed, that you didn't really do anything at all? it could be that a) we're not that good at setting our agendas, allowing them to become filled with lesser priorities, or b) we don't really set our own agendas, answering to external demands. neither option sounds good.

so it is that we find ourselves with lots of things to do, not enough time to do them, and not enough time for anything else, really. nothing spontaneous. nothing different (unless one of us were to be so inventive as to include doing something different on our agenda).

"in his heart a man plans his course,

but the LORD determines his steps."

- proverbs 16:9

when things don't work according to plan, we often get frustrated, stressed and annoyed. but sometimes i think that that's what it takes for God to get our attention. otherwise, we could just focus on our task lists and rush around without ever paying attention to anything else.

on ownership

i recently went to look at flats here in london. we're going to be renting and, to keep with our budget, many of the places we've seen are flatshares, where we would share the flat with other people. a typical question we would ask the current tenants is how long they intend to stay there. this is so we can gauge the stability of the household and whether significant changes were to be expected in terms of the interpersonal dynamics.

in one case, we asked a guy and he said that if it was possible, he intended to stay in the flat for the rest of his life. that is, he intended to rent his room in the flat and share the other facilities (kitchen, bathroom) for the rest of his life. perhaps it is the small bubble that i lived in when i was in toronto, but i found that to be a very interesting statement.

you see, in toronto, i got the sense that it was almost assumed that the natural progression in your life is to own a property of some sort. a house, an apartment, a condo, a townhouse, a cottage, a cemetary plot - something. perhaps it's because we all studied "the apprenticeship of duddy kravitz" in school, where it was impressed upon us that a man without land is nothing. or perhaps we're a pragmatic group of people who believe owning property and having equity is more financially prudent than paying rent until the end of time (or at least, your time here on earth). but we do seem infatuated with this notion of ownership.

i'm sure there are plenty of people in toronto who will always rent. but i'm equally sure that it's a choice the people i know would publicly tolerate (in fine canadian fashion) and frown upon in private. in london, there are people who own properties, but probably an equal or larger proportion of the population who do not. here, renting forever is something that is quite widely accepted. in fact, it is assumed that you rent the flat in which you live unless you specify otherwise.

but this ownership of land and property also leads to an interesting contrast when it comes to shared spaces, such as the street, a park, or a church. we own our homes and cars and, in some cases, are fanatical about keeping them clean and tidy. but we're also decidedly less picky about how we treat shared spaces. the litter on the streets is testament to that. so is the gum that you accidentally step on. smokers, some of who may have pristine apartments and homes, are remarkably tolerant when it comes to the numerous butts that are scattered around their designated areas.

for a generation that loves to own things, there is a stark contrast when it comes to taking ownership, particularly of shared spaces. preceding generations are known for fighting wars, liberating women and abolishing slavery. ours may very well be remembered for keeping our own homes clean, but little else.