QQC: Mastery

Quote: see left

Question: But seriously, folks...why reach?

Comment: But really, this sort of negates the purpose of the other aspects of mastery. We can never achieve mastery, therefore mastery is never the sort of pain we think it is. Perhaps we ought to better define the mastery that the author is discussing here. Mastery attracts because mastery eludes all? No, on the contrary, it attracts because it seems to elude most (it might really elude all, but not everyone thinks this). Who wants to be the master is no one can attain it? Rather, Someone can attain it, so it might as well be me. The idea with mastery, perhaps, (& however), probably goes hand in hand with the very learned people of the world, where the expression: "the more you know, the more you know how much you don't [know]". This is probably the idea of mastery being discussed here.True mastery is perfection. No man can claim this (ok, so I know one man, but most people disregard this account, so for now we'll call him an anomaly). Mastery is better defined this way and make much more sense in this respect. Was Bobby Fischer the Chess Grand Master? yes. Did he realize his fallibility? Certainly. Did he make mistakes? always. Yet why would he be regarded as a Chess Master? Because he attained higher than anyone else during his time. The real reason for his fame? His ability to approach mastery closer than anyone else had done before. But no one knew better than Bobby Fischer how easily his mastery could be overcome, because, if we are to take the author's words as true, there is always the ability to get infinitesimally closer to the unobtainable level of true mastery than those before us.

Mastery is an Asymptote. This is discouraging, not encouraging. Clearly the real idea with this message is that there is always room to improve. You are never at a point where you can simply stop worrying, stop practicing, stop searching for ways to upgrade, improve, redefine, reinvent, finesse, refine, fix, address problems or improvements. We are never at a point where we can be fully self assured. For those of us who love to learn, this is encouraging in this respect only. Certainly we would like to achieve mastery. But perhaps if we did, what would we do then?