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Sep. 2nd, 2003 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaxjedi*yawn* Tired ranting....
I wonder if it will ever end. The constant war of attrition that we call day-to-day life. People complain about busywork in schools and how it bores students and doesn't accomplish much. As I go farther on in life, I realize that that busywork is probably the best preparation for the Real World(tm) that school can provide. Because most of life is simply busy work. It is scores of little things that we have to do in order to maintain our lives - driving to work, doing laundry, filling out forms, waiting in line, etc ad nauseum. I think the halls of academia, from the college on down, have a very narrow view of what the world is supposed to be - a cornacopia of exciting learning experiences and new ideas for us to examime and discover. But they forget that a lot of those leanring experiences are backed up by busy work and boring details - to be a writer, you have to sit down and write, revise, rewrite and revise again. Then you might have a novel. To be a scientist, you have perform hundreds of small experiements in carefully controlled conditions over and over again and analyze mounds of data. And you might have a discovery. To be an artist, you have to learn all the rules of your art, practice and practice more. Then you can understand how to break the rules an make a master piece.
The fact is, life is full of boring work. The geniuses of our history weren't the ones who were naturally gifted and thus got to bypass the rules - they are just on-hit wonders. The geniuses were those who took their natural aptitude and built on it with a thorough understanding of their field and the ability to work through the boring details with the understanding that this would take them to where they wanted to go. Talent is born, genius is learned.
A lot of this I wished I'd figured out in High School. I always felt like I had a lot of talent - I thought I was one of these geniuses in the making (that's what my father always told me). But I got bored easily. I was trying to work smarter, not harder. And I never learned that there are sometimes where the smartest thing is just to to the boring stuff to get it out of the way, if nothing else.
This sort of sounds depressive. And to a certain extent, it is.
But there is a sense of hope in it too. I mean, I keep looking at what I am supposed to be doing - all the exciting and interesting things I could have been doing, or the people I knew which have interesting lives, etc. And after looking for a while, I begin to realize that their lives are full of busy work and boring things as well. They aren't any different than me.
And so we come back to one of the most important truths of the modern world: we are slaves to PR. It's a fact that we cannot escape - we are constantly shaped and brainwashed by our media and entertainment. So much so that we have been given false expectations on what we consider to be a 'productive' or ' 'worthwhile' life. We have to accomplish so much, we have to provide so much for our partners/children/community, we have to achieve things, etc etc etc. But these things don't matter. We just think they matter, so we feel obliged to act as if we do.
To quote the Fellowship of the Ring movie: It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life. And I think if we simplified our lives, we;'d be happier. Im not necessarily talking in terms of technology, but just in expectation. Is it a bad thing to be quiet? To take pleasure in a quiet night at home, or a quiet night with a friend or lover? In simple things like good food and good movies? I dunno. Maybe I don't need to accomplish as much as I think I do.
I wonder if it will ever end. The constant war of attrition that we call day-to-day life. People complain about busywork in schools and how it bores students and doesn't accomplish much. As I go farther on in life, I realize that that busywork is probably the best preparation for the Real World(tm) that school can provide. Because most of life is simply busy work. It is scores of little things that we have to do in order to maintain our lives - driving to work, doing laundry, filling out forms, waiting in line, etc ad nauseum. I think the halls of academia, from the college on down, have a very narrow view of what the world is supposed to be - a cornacopia of exciting learning experiences and new ideas for us to examime and discover. But they forget that a lot of those leanring experiences are backed up by busy work and boring details - to be a writer, you have to sit down and write, revise, rewrite and revise again. Then you might have a novel. To be a scientist, you have perform hundreds of small experiements in carefully controlled conditions over and over again and analyze mounds of data. And you might have a discovery. To be an artist, you have to learn all the rules of your art, practice and practice more. Then you can understand how to break the rules an make a master piece.
The fact is, life is full of boring work. The geniuses of our history weren't the ones who were naturally gifted and thus got to bypass the rules - they are just on-hit wonders. The geniuses were those who took their natural aptitude and built on it with a thorough understanding of their field and the ability to work through the boring details with the understanding that this would take them to where they wanted to go. Talent is born, genius is learned.
A lot of this I wished I'd figured out in High School. I always felt like I had a lot of talent - I thought I was one of these geniuses in the making (that's what my father always told me). But I got bored easily. I was trying to work smarter, not harder. And I never learned that there are sometimes where the smartest thing is just to to the boring stuff to get it out of the way, if nothing else.
This sort of sounds depressive. And to a certain extent, it is.
But there is a sense of hope in it too. I mean, I keep looking at what I am supposed to be doing - all the exciting and interesting things I could have been doing, or the people I knew which have interesting lives, etc. And after looking for a while, I begin to realize that their lives are full of busy work and boring things as well. They aren't any different than me.
And so we come back to one of the most important truths of the modern world: we are slaves to PR. It's a fact that we cannot escape - we are constantly shaped and brainwashed by our media and entertainment. So much so that we have been given false expectations on what we consider to be a 'productive' or ' 'worthwhile' life. We have to accomplish so much, we have to provide so much for our partners/children/community, we have to achieve things, etc etc etc. But these things don't matter. We just think they matter, so we feel obliged to act as if we do.
To quote the Fellowship of the Ring movie: It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life. And I think if we simplified our lives, we;'d be happier. Im not necessarily talking in terms of technology, but just in expectation. Is it a bad thing to be quiet? To take pleasure in a quiet night at home, or a quiet night with a friend or lover? In simple things like good food and good movies? I dunno. Maybe I don't need to accomplish as much as I think I do.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-02 04:20 pm (UTC)And of course it's not a bad think to be quiet- to take pleasure in the quiet little things. Those are the things that make up the quality of life. Enjoying those things is exactly what Thoreau meant when he spoke about sucking the marrow out of life. Those things make you live, as opposed to exist. They are necessary to the soul, should be sought out whenever possible, and treasured always.
you need
Date: 2003-09-03 11:34 am (UTC)I never learned that there are sometimes where the smartest thing is just to to the boring stuff to get it out of the way, if nothing else.
deffinately depressing, but true...