Sponges and the self in the pursuit of excellence.

Sponges

I walk through the streets every day, watching people going about their lives.  They have their own style to doing things in and outside of work.  Routines, relaxation, personal organization permeate what they do and how well they do it.

How do we learn to do something in our lives, ever?  We see, watch, or hear how it is done by someone else.  How to talk, say please and thank you, shake hands like a pro.

How do we learn to something better?  We see it done better.  We learn to speak like a President, give praise like a, well, teacher, and shake hands like a salesman, because we see them done in our lives.

Let's say that every person is working at 90% of their potential, in terms of how awesomely they can do the things in their lives that matter.  We all have weaknesses that we can improve.  (If there is a perfect person out there, please do let me know.)

Maybe for half of what they do well, it is 100%, and for the other half, they are doing things at 80% of what it could be.  These are not going to be the same things for everyone.  So what if we took the something done at 100% from each person we see?

If we do it until we have a way of doing nearly each thing at 100%.  Suddenly, moving from 90% (if you are great from the start), or 80% (if you are average at the start of something) to body temperature (98.6%) or even higher does not seem so hard.

I am a sponge.  When I see someone doing something better than me, I like to remember it and make it my own.  How to speak, how to organize my free time.  At school, I ask if I can take photos of every teacher's classroom- they have years of experience on me and do things a lot better.  Whether it is celebratory student exhibitions or progress tracking charts, why wait until I get more experience to do them too?

Move down the learning curve fast, and you get closer to excellence.  Learn to do better when you are younger.

The Self


"But you're just copying everyone else.  Where's the originality?"

What is truly you? As I've discussed before, there is rarely something that organically grows from within ourself, independent of outside influence.  It is simply a continuum on which the degree of explicit outside influence shows in what we do.

Where is the me in it?

Nietzche described the self not as a pearl of something original in ourselves, but rather the molding of all the things that we are and have been into a continuously coherent self.  Not a pearl, but rather a balloon that encapsulates everything that can float around on its own.

Our balloons of life fill with a bit more air of experience every day, allowing us to reach even greater heights.  Yes, my balloon has patches of others'.  I'm making a big balloon.