What are you good at? The chances are you that you are pretty good at what you do for a living. Even if you are not the best at it, you have spent thousands of hours doing it and you can do it better than a random person lassoed on the street.
Those thousands of hours of practise add up and in the end, make you good at what you do. For a professional scientist, they add up fast even before ‘professional’ practice begins. Somebody who has gained a four-year bachelors degree, a two-year masters and a four-year PhD has spent about 20,000 hours in classes, self-study, laboratories and meetings, learning the skills of the profession. She has mastered the methods of questioning, investigation, analysis and collaboration that power the scientific enterprise. She has already contributed substantively to the body of human knowledge, and has become a domain expert in her research subject. She probably also has raging impostor syndrome and a poor self-image, but that is a topic for another post.
That accumulated learning, practise and other active professional development have moulded our imaginary scientist — as yours have moulded you — into somebody who can not only do things they couldn’t do before, but also sees the world in a way they didn’t before.
I will never forget the sense of awe and wonder with which I looked anew at trees after learning about the detailed mechanisms of photosynthesis, and how they connected to other plant metabolic processes. And I may never quite forgive the study of thermodynamics for ruining many movie plot devices! I have no doubt that as much as the study of biochemistry changed the way I read and interpret the world, so must the study of physics, of history, politics, dancing or any other discipline.
The years of practise don’t teach us everything though. Indeed, as hard as it may be for some of us to hear it, there is more to life than science (or engineering, or law, or football, or art, or whatever your main life focus is). The industrial economy and modern culture may value the specialist but for most of us, a happy and fulfilled life calls for balance, and at least some skill in both the practicalities of living, and in how we make sense and meaning of life in a confusing universe.
So here is the key question for today: How many hours have you spent in developing your spiritual skill set? During the 20,000 hours that it took our imaginary scientist to get her PhD, how many hours did she spend pursuing her spiritual wellbeing, whether she was a Buddhist, Jew, Muslim, Christian or atheist? If she was a Muslim and faithfully performed Salah every day, that may have added up to about 2000 hours. Likewise if she was a humanist who spent a similar amount of time in meditation or yoga. And in either case, that would make her unusually diligent in her spiritual practice. Most people might spend 10% of that again, perhaps reading an occasional uplifting book or ‘trying mindfulness’ in erratic fits and starts.
Is it any wonder we so often feel frustrated, that we live in a world that has become more of a shouting match than a place of compassion and mutual support?
So let’s start developing some spiritual skill. Like any other skill, we don’t begin at the top. I, for example, am not about to go out and run a marathon. But I can run around the block.
The Challenge:
So here is my challenge to you today: As soon as you have finished reading this, go and find somewhere quiet. If you have a private office, shut the door. If you don’t, go and find a space apart — go and sit under a tree, anything. Set a 10-minute timer on your phone, and sit quietly. Don’t think about what you should be doing. Just feel yourself breathing and being. If thoughts from the daily bustle intrude, recognise that they are just thoughts, not reality. Gently let them pass, and continue to breathe and to be.
Then tomorrow, do it again.