Sir Ken Robinson is a British writer; he would go into nursery schools and ask the children, “Who in here is an artist?”. At the age of four or so, every hand goes up. He’d go to rooms of 3rd or 4th graders and ask, “Who in here is an artist,” nearly no hands went up. Why?
Robinson thinks that kids were told, either overtly or in more subtle ways, that they simply weren’t good at art. As I think about it, at that age, the test of whether an artist is good or not is often whether they can draw something that looks like something in real life. While that’s a form of art, it is a ridiculously small genre of art. Art comes in many mediums and can be real or abstract. Imagine the talent and art lost forever because, at the age of eight, a child didn’t excel in a merit-based system with a bafflingly small definition of art.
Can you not be good and still ok?
As we age, the disqualification becomes more self-induced. At a certain age, we only do what we’re good at or suspect we will be good at. I’m 53, I don’t try much of anything that I don’t already know or at least suspect I’ll be good at. Talk about a slowly shrinking world, right?
My worth, tied to having skill through a lifetime of schooling and a culture that narrowly defines excellence, is too fragile to risk the embarrassment of doing something that doesn’t measure up.
When was the last time you did something you weren’t good at? Something you weren’t told either through merit, status, pay, or winning you have the skill for doing in life.
In a pickle
Over the last year or more, I’ve tried my hand at pickleball. You might be sick of hearing about it, or if you live close enough to a court, sick of hearing it being played. The game has a steady plink, plunk sound of a plastic ball being hit by hard graphite paddles. It’s actually generated noise complaints.
People describe it as a mash-up of tennis, ping pong, and badminton, but easier than any of the three individually. I’ve played maybe 40-50 games, and I’d say that description fits. I’ve played the other games and have no reason to believe I can play pickleball.
Pickleball has had a meteoric rise in popularity over the last five years. It’s what a physical trainer friend of mine calls a “lifetime sport”: something you can play late into life, like golf or shuffleboard. I think this was his polite way of implying my old body can still do it, but whatever.
Find your version of pickleball
The landslide of risks around not trying new things starts with something a bit nuanced. If we are immediately good at everything we do, we are not exposed to the potential of seeing ourselves improve, or the arc of our improvement is minimal. We can take the potential for improvement completely out of our field of experience. Improvement gets limited to things we have extremely limited ability to affect. We only know improvement if our day happens to go well, the markets are up, or our tasks run smoothly. But so much of that is beyond our control. Whereas, if we come to something we can or need to improve in, something different is on offer. We can feel a sense of growth, address the need for adaptation, and move towards a goal with a bit more liberty than we usually enjoy.
If we’re not careful, the experience of failure, learning, and improvement can drift from our lives as we age. Studies indicate the risk to our brain health and longevity is pretty dire.
Worth related?
If our worth is tied to only being the best in the room or at least on the medal podium in everything we do, we might pass as superhuman but fail at being human. Our brains need striving, learning, and play. What’s more, our entire bodies need movement.
If pickleball instigates an eye roll, I get it. Like anything in our culture it can be cringe and overhyped. My encouragement today is to find your version of something you’d have to say: “I’m not good at this, but I can learn.” Take the hit to your ego, your worth will be given a new durability. If you have to move your body, that’s a great addition. I’m told I need to get around eight thousand steps in a day. Three or four games of pickleball give me at least half that.
Maybe your thing will be musical, art, writing, or cooking. Fortunately for me, the vast array of things I’m not good at gives me a seemingly endless list of opportunities. This entire Substack thing is an exercise in what I need to improve. But I have friends who’ve tried ballroom dancing, glass-blowing, and learning a new language.
Worth-challenged people have a tendency to need a steady pipeline of affirmation, but that shouldn’t be limited to only doing what we always have done. If so, our good feelings around affirmation can seem to fade, too. Getting affirmed in what we already have skill in has less of a boost in it.
So get out there, dance, pickle, cook, and fail your way into new tiers of your value.
Be well, Feral Souls.