January 16, 2005
In praise of 0xDECAFBAD
Do you know the situation when your mind circles around a particular idea for a long time and suddenly you have it all in front of you, written down in clear English, by someone who isn't you? For me one of these someones is Leslie Michael Orchard and his site 0xDECAFBAD, which regularely manages to make some part of my brain resonate.
In the fall of 2003 it was his post Seeking Out Opposites which had me tag Leslie as a mind worth watching. He wrote:
For the past year or two, I've been trying an experiment in my personal research and learning. I've been seeking out tools and technologies which are as different as possible from those with which I already have experience. I want to break up some prejudices and habits I have, and expose myself to more ways of looking at things.
In a culture of penis comparison parties along the lines of "My $whatever is better than your $whatever", I found this to be quite a statement.
Recently I've been thinking a lot about how hard it is to know your place in a trade where you can rule so much and still get your ass handed to you on a regular basis. I see this long clouded path no matter if I look ahead or behind me, making it impossible to know where I stand.
Out of nowhere enters Beginner's Mind versus Teacher's Mind, a true gem of webloggery and an amazingly accurate map of my current train of thoughts:
In learning, I’ve tried to keep an open and unassuming mind about things. And even after I have learned quite a bit about something, and I can demonstrate obvious expertise with something to anyone who’s watching, I still consider myself a beginner. There’s always someone who knows more about that thing than I do—from whom I want to learn even more—so I don’t ever want to let myself feel like I’ve arrived and allow my learning to be clouded.
So herein lies the rub: If I’m always a beginner, how can I ever be a teacher? It’s not so much a rational issue—it’s more an issue of emotion and habits of thought. Rationally, I think it’s safe to say that as I learn about something, I climb up a ladder of experts’ shoulders. And below me, still down the ladder, are other beginners doing the climb. But where I run into trouble is in trying to figure out where I am on the ladder, and where and how I should make myself available as a rung. Because, there are so many others at and above my level already providing their shoulders, and the climb still has so much farther yet to go above me. [emphasis mine]
Watch this guy.
Posted by Henning
