Zeal

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” – Aristotle

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I remember what zealotry used to feel like. That ever-expanding frontier of something-ness. The thought that this, this, THIS, above all things is worth my time. That zeal used to burn bright.

For a while it was chemistry, grandeur found in the course catalogue of the University of Chicago. Then, sitting in a to single class at Brown University, neuroscience consumed all thought. When those tides waned, bioengineering filled the hole. I don’t doubt that ad infinitum could very easily have sufficed to explain the rest of that torrid history.

I say could, because what once was a Molotov of a blaze is now a dull sheen of indifference. It wasn’t the chemistry, nor the neuroscience, nor the bioengineering, nor was it what ever other godawful replacement likely to come in its place. It wasn’t the summit, it was being at base camp looking up the slope, with flag in hand. Chasing the high of the action, instead of relishing the act.

It just doesn’t fucking matter.

What’s the difference of having the Laplace transform down pat? Of knowing what the six layers of the cortex contain? Of the name of some chemical reaction no one gives a shit about? These concepts, ideas, reactions – whatever your poison may be – are tools. Does a carpenter spend four years of his life learning about how his hammers are made, or what constitutes a good hammer, or how to tell the difference between a hammer and a banana? No – he learns a craft, practices it, and spends the rest of his life, if he is dedicated, perfecting it.

Here I am, here you are, I suspect, a year or two away from the biggest transition life can give us, and we’re learning about tools – our hammers, our nails, our million-dollar biomedical imaging devices. How more prepared are we from four years ago? Daily we spend our time learning, instead of creating, or thinking, or imagining, or even daydreaming. We are kept busy with drudgery, if only to placate that half-formed wariness that what we learn makes so, so little difference.

Michael Lopp writes about a similar phenomenon that plagues managers in “real-life” world, a phenomenon he calls the Faux-Zone:

It is a place intended to create the same rewarding sense of productivity and satisfaction as the Zone, but it is an absolutely fake Zone complete with the addictive mental and chemical feedback, but there is little creative value. In the Faux-Zone, you aren’t really building anything.

It doesn’t have to be like that. There’s no reason for you and me, sexy smart thinkers that we are, to go on pretending. Lopp suggests devoting one precious hour every single day to building something.

I say go further. If there’s one thing in this world worthing being full of zeal for, it’s yourself. Wonder. Daydream. Write. Build. But do it with a passion. Or don’t do it at all.