On Taking All of Me

A child across the street is playing with a ball. I hear him practicing with his football as I sit practicing with my piano. He does seem to get more joy of it, too. It’s uneven, not regimented, taking its path with the path of the ball, that falls where it will. And he can play like this for hours.

            The piano teacher makes the remark: “You have the knowledge to play this piece, but you don’t yet have the skill.” The word skill, which once meant ‘understanding’, comes from an Anglo-Saxon past where the meaning was ‘distinction’. And ‘distinction’ refers in its turn to discrimination or distinguishment between things that are separate, or distinct. Hence, understanding. Yet now it preferences its secondary meaning of superiority, or particular favour. The idea is that skill, dexterity, mastery, is specially favoured and distinct.

            ‘Dexterity’ contains a fluency, or flowingness: the grace with which right-handed people use the right hand, while their left acts comparatively awkwardly. In the not distant past, right-handedness was considered natural, so the idea of a dexterous left hand took time to assimilate. Alas for me, playing the piano requires the dexterous use of both hands.

            It’s said that mastery of any skill takes at least 10,000 hours of practice. I’ve tried to become skilful at many things in my days, and at 10,000 hours each I get the feeling that each of them wants to take all of me. Of course there’s not enough of me to go around. The main difficulty is time for practice.

            There are many kinds of skills: physical skills, like riding a bicycle, relying on balance and muscle memory below the level of consciousness; mental skills like arithmetic and spelling that call upon and interpret symbols. And there may be spiritual skills, like the ‘skilful means’ of the Buddhists who practice the noble eight-fold path. Anger, for example, is generally one of the less skilful ways of dealing with other people.

            Paul invited the Galatians to ‘live by the Spirit.’ This would produce the ‘fruits’ of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And he particularly warned them against being ‘desirous of vain glory’ (St. Ignatius Loyola agreed with him, thinking this was Satan’s portal), or competitive, or envious. If we take a look at our own culture, and people we see in public life, aren’t these the distinguishing features of society: competition, envy, lust for fame?

            We have plenty of time to put in the 10,000 hours of practice on patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control and all the others. We don’t need a bicycle or a piano or even a football to practice. You can do it all day, even on public transport, even on the road. Living in the spirit results in the fruits, but it also is the fruits. And you can play with it, like the child with the ball, following the Way, that falls where it will.