Experiences Versus Being Good
“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of ‘getting to know you’ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
“And he went wow. That’s amazing! And I said, ‘Oh no, but I’m not any good at any of them.’
“And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: ‘I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.’
“And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could ‘win’ at them.”
This story has been circulating for more than a year and has been attributed to legendary author Kurt Vonnegut. While it is unclear whether Vonnegut actually said it, the story itself is very compelling. It also gives hope to anyone who wants to try something new. We know that in the beginning of trying something, we are not going to be that good at it. When we are children, we are usually OK with trying, failing, slipping, falling until we are better at something. However, at some point, we begin to feel embarrassment and as adults we often refuse to try things because of having to go through that difficult beginning until we are better.
The story reminds us that being good at things is often much less important than having the experience of doing something. To take an extreme example, let’s look at composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was playing short pieces on the harpsichord (a sort of Renaissance piano) at the age of four and composing at the age of five! By the time he was thirteen, he was composing symphonies and playing for royalty.
This is certainly very impressive and Mozart has been hailed as a child genius and a prodigy. While he was certainly an incredible musician and unbelievably advanced compared to other children and even adults, Mozart’s parents exposed him to music very early and began his musical training almost from birth. This gave him a huge head start, and coupled with his natural musical talent, he excelled very quickly.
By the time he was thirteen, Mozart had had over eleven years of musical training. Even so, musicians will admit that his first performances, while impressive for a four-year-old, were probably mediocre at best. He was, after all, still a child. The same can be said for his early compositions. While writing music at five years old is incredibly impressive, the music itself was mediocre.
The quality of the music however, is not the point. It is the doing that matters. Leonardo da Vinci was born out of wedlock, in a time when this was a serious mark against you and could ruin your life. He received the most basic education as a child and did not demonstrate any particular talent except in art. We all know how that turned out, with da Vinci being an expert in a large number of completely different areas including mathematics, painting, sculpture, engineering and cartography. He tried a very wide variety of things and found that he enjoyed many of them.
There are numerous examples in history of people trying a number of things, regardless of their skill level, and enjoying themselves to the point where they became the best at it.
Impara l’arte e metti da parte. (Learn a skill and set it aside.)
-Italian proverb
While in many cases, it is possible and even probable to excel at something if you dedicate enough time and deliberate practice to it, no one expects genius from the beginning. Mozart and da Vinci quickly become experts in their fields, but they did not start out that way. Most of us will never attain those extreme levels of achievement, but it is the doing of the things that is most important. Having experiences can be so rewarding if we really like to do a thing, regardless of how good we are at it.
You can gain an incredible amount of enjoyment in life from a wide variety of experiences, particularly if you are less concerned with what you and others think of your skill level, and more concerned with learning things that are interesting to you, regardless of the eventual outcome.