The reality of life
Mar 15, 2021
If you watch movies you know that producers work hard to keep our attention on the screen. Real life seems quite exciting – a series of endless climaxes as Leonard describes it:
"In all of this, the specific content isn’t nearly as destructive to mastery as is the rhythm. One epiphany follows another. One fantasy is crowded out by the next. Climax is piled upon climax. There’s no plateau."
A little bit of work is followed by great results in the movies and this can skew our perceptions in many ways.
The real life path of mastery is not that exciting when we watch it moment by moment because it involves many plateaus—often long ones—where nothing appears to be improving very fast.
Leonard advises: "If you’re planning to embark on a master’s journey, you might find yourself bucking current trends in American life. Our hyped-up consumerist society is engaged, in fact, in an all out war on mastery."
One more thing, during the plateau, when nothing seems to be happening, the progress may well be taking place under the surface, much like the roots of the Chinese Bamboo Tree.
