In today’s the NYTimes, I found a thought-provoking article:
(It’s Great to) Suck at Something
“Maybe sucking at something where the stakes are low [emphasis mine] can lead us to a better place. Maybe it could be a kind of a medicine for the epidemic cocksureness in our culture. Seeing ourselves repeatedly doing something we suck at — no matter how trivial — might make us a bit more sympathetic to how hard so many things really are: trying to navigate health issues, listening to our neighbors, improving the economy or mitigating relations with hostile nations.
By exposing ourselves to the experience of trying and failing we might develop more empathy. If we succeed in shifting from snap judgments to patience, maybe we could be a little more helpful to one another — and a whole lot more understanding.”
I’m trying to develop that kind of patience with myself, first by acknowledging that I am a beginner (or recent returnee) in lots of things. And then by setting myself up on a path to get better at the things that are important. And when I’m really honest with myself, some of the things I suck at are really important things. And that scares me. And it brings up shame. Still, it’s good to know that I (currently) suck at things. It’s a good stretch for my perfectionist self to be able to say that. Or something like that. “What I’m working on right now is [complete this sentence appropriately]”
There are different kinds of sucking, with hugely different consequences.
Sucking at something that is actually important to your existence, like keeping yourself healthy, or doing the work you get paid to do in a smooth and efficient way, is bad. That’s something to work on changing. Sucking at it is okay for a little while, but you can’t stay there. You have to get to not sucking, and then to competence, and maybe even all the way to mastery.
Sucking at something that is (just) something you’re wanting to do, like the surfing in the article, is different. That kind of sucking is an opportunity for growth in patience and willingness to stay in the moment, to persist, and to savor and celebrate the successes you manage. It’s an opportunity to admire others, and to learn to appreciate the small, intermediate, not-so-amazing accomplishments you pull off. And in sticking with that suckiness, we gain empathy — with ourselves and with others. Like she said.
Note: This was originally drafted in 2017, when the quoted article appeared. And it languished, as a draft, until 2021, when I remembered I had written something about sucking that would probably benefit from that window image that I found in my Instagram feed, without any attribution. And I found it in the drafts, unpublished for more than four years. And so my long-dark draft sees the dim light of day as a published post.