Dazzling Mastery: Departures, Crosby Stills, Coaches, Gurus and Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

The line from the Crosby, Stills etc song "Teach Your Children Well,"  which reversed the chorus into "Teach Your Parents Well," struck me, in the 60's as fatuous, but now I can see it.

Watching a Japanese movie, Departures,  about a cello player who learns a new profession, a sort of ceremonial body preparer for an undertaker, my older son remarked, "That's so Japanese: It's all about mastery and becoming a virtuoso."

This connected with something I had heard on NPR about how the Japanese teach children: The teacher typically has the student who could not solve the problem put his work on the blackboard at the front of the classroom, not to humiliate the child but to instruct everyone--this is where you can go wrong here. Let's learn from this. There is no humiliation in failing, while you strive to learn and master something. Learning is expected to be a struggle, and defeat and getting it wrong part of the process. The real thrill of become a master is the struggle past your own failures.

My brother, who was head of a department in a medical school, observed the best doctors he trained were often athletes, not the students who had never got less than an "A" from kindergarten on. "The athlete knows how to accept getting it wrong, having the flag thrown at him, and he is not demoralized by this. He is coach able. Next time, he'll get it right. So he actually grows and comes out way ahead of the gunners, the strivers who are all about never making a mistake."

Watching my younger son, as a nine year old, devour an opponent in a wrestling tournament, my older son, two years his senior, shook his head and said, without lament, just as a matter of observation: "He is, right now, better at something than I will ever be at anything."

I could see what he meant: His brother was throwing one perfectly executed move after another at his opponent, and it was a clinic in technique and timing. His brother was totally in control of the match, supremely competent and it brought smiles to his coaches, who would nudge by standers after each spectacular move, and say, "I thought him that."

Of course, my older son was wrong. He came to master kayaking. He was coached by a woman who was an Olympian, daily, patiently, over years. And for one brief, shining moment, found himself in third place after the initial runs at the slalom course for the Olympic trials, at age 17. He looked around the holding pool at the Olympians he was trying to displace and he saw them, all of them 10 years older than he,  looking at him, wondering who the hell this kid was. I wanted to tell him, "I think you are probably as good now as your brother was then." But he was too far away, and he was in his own zone, thinking about the upcoming run. He did not make the Olympic team, but he did prove his virtuosity that day.

Later, he struggled to become a virtuoso as a musician, but he ran up against the limits of his own talents, or possibly against his own proclivity to underestimate himself.  He said, "When I came to NYU, I thought I was a real stud with the saxophone. I came out of high school thinking, 'Move over Coltrane, here I come.' But now, after 6 weeks at NYU, I realize, if I practice really hard, eight hours a day, I might just become average." 

New York University brings talented musicians and actors from all over the country and throws them together. It is a humbling experience for most.

Watching their progress, as these two brothers grew, I learned something about the most valuable part of talent for most mere mortals. There are some people whose genes simply set them apart and above everyone else, and they are often identifiable from an early age. But for 99.5% of everyone else, virtuosity is a halting, humbling process:Two steps forward, one back.

The younger brother, such a star at age 9,moved up in levels of competition, stage by stage, and at each stage, he suffered defeats, set backs, frustration, but he persisted. As a high school sophomore, his wrestling technique was impeccable but he simply did not have the power, the sheer muscle to ever win a major tournament. Still, he sought out ever higher levels of coaching, until he found a guru of national quality.

 Finally, as a high school senior, he grew into his body, put on muscle and at 5'10" he was a monster of a 140 pounder. He won every tournament his senior year, upsetting all the boys who had been winners all their lives, but had never had to reassess themselves, to think anew. Finally, in the national prep tournament, he used a move he had learned from his guru to beat a wrestler from Blair Academy--a powerhouse program whose wrestlers were never beaten and almost never even behind in their matches. He actually pinned his man. 

But, in the championship match against the Pennsylvania state champion, he lost, by a point, after having his man on his back.  There was outrage in the field house. Calls of "Hometown justice!" rang out--the tournament was held in Pennsylvania. The refs had stopped the match with the Pennsylvanian on his back because the refs ruled he was in danger of being injured. 

But the younger brother shrugged it off. "Who would have predicted I'd place 2nd in this tournament?  I'd never placed higher than 8th in the last 3 years."  This is not a person who gets "down on himself," who gets in his own way.

Watching these two boys, I learned from all this.  As a little leaguer, I had been a mediocre baseball player. I was intimidated by the best fast balls and fell away from curve balls. But, returning to the game as an adult, I took the lessons I learned from my sons.  I went to the batting cages and dialed up the speed to 85 miles an hour, faster than any I ever saw in games in my adult league. At first, total ineptitude, but gradually, after much failure, I learned how to catch up to the fast ball.

For curves, I found a master to teach me. He was unwilling, at first. "I don't teach adults," he said. 

"Why not?"

"They just won't learn. They won't change. They won't take my advice."

"Just try me."

He taught me to hit the curve, and in the first game after my lessons, the pitcher threw me a curve. By now, pitchers were throwing me anything but a fast ball. I hit that first curve I saw into right field. 

Standing on first base, I thought, my children have taught me well.

And I thought about the value of other people. I went to public schools, and I learned somehow, to distrust my teachers. Rightly or wrongly,  I thought most of them were only a page ahead of me in the textbook.

But later, in college, I could see the professors knew their fields well. You could ask them a question and not get that deer in the headlights look of panic. They smiled, and launched into an answer which told you they not only knew the answer to that question but they could open a whole world of knowing they had only hinted at in their lecture. Graduate school, was the same. I was being taught by masters, by virtuoso's who could bring me to a higher level.

I had seen the value of the virtuoso, in the careers of my sons--the wrestling guru who taught my second son, and the former Olympians who taught my older son. 

There is no greater gift another human being can give than what he can teach you. No money, no social status, no material worth can approach the power of being able to transform one human being. 

The Karate Kid, the movie about a karate master who teaches a boy mastery is a Hollywood version of this idea. It has the neat trick of revealing the master's strategy only slowly, with the reveal held back until the moment of appreciation, but it is still a worthy subject, almost never done in movies. There are plenty of movies about coaches giving inspirational speeches, but almost none about real mastery. This is understandable: What Hollywood screenwriter really knows anything about mastery in other areas, beyond writing scripts?

But mastery is out there, and it is the great hope for humankind. 
When a Nobel laureate in medicine is asked how he had the imagination to think of the path toward his discovery, toward his breakthrough, he typically says some version of, "I stood on the shoulders of giants." 
That is the most important thing which distinguishes the species homo sapiens. It is the thing on which all progress depends.