Common Dreams recently published
an article by Huck Gutman, a man who had the opportunity to spend a
week in New York City. While he partook of the usual visitor
experiences in the city, what struck him most was this brief experience
watching a man in a laundry through the store window:
As I walked, I passed a dry
cleaner’s shop. At its front, immediately behind a large plate glass
window, was a man ironing a shirt. I stopped and watched. (I should
mention that I like ironing my own shirts. In America, ironed shirts
are an expensive luxury unless one does it oneself; and I have found
that the repetitive motions of ironing, and the concentration required
to assure that one irons wrinkles out and not in, is a restful
activity. For me.) He ironed, and I watched. And watched. He ironed one
shirt, then a second. There was a defined progression for each shirt.
First, he sprayed the shirt lightly with water to dampen it. Then, as
he ironed each successive portion of the shirt he sprayed on a light
dose of starch to make the fabric stiffer. He proceeded to iron the
collar, then carefully laid out each sleeve and ironed them, one at a
time. Then he starched and ironed one half of the shirt, placed flat on
his white-cotton clad ironing table. When he was done, he lightly
touched the iron to the middle of the collar at the back of the neck —
just a small crease so it would fold properly. He hung the shirt on a
hanger, and proceeded to the next. I, an amateur, iron quickly. He, a
professional, did not. He took care, making certain that each sweep of
the iron made a flat expanse of brilliant white fabric.
There is something almost primeval about this recognition of the
importance of doing a job with excellence. As I mentioned in my article
two years ago, It's What I Do, doing something extraordinarily well is more than just a matter of pride. It essentially defines
us. We are all inherently social creatures, and our sense of belonging
to the communities which we adopt, and which adopt us, is caught up in,
and expresses itself through, our role, our specialization. Even in the
earliest tribal cultures individuals recognized other individuals'
strengths, experiences and talents, and this recognition refined and
defined each individual's role, and importance, in the community. These
skills, these differences, established one's position, one's membership, in the community.
Doing what we are, what we enjoy doing, and what we do well, is
essential to our self-esteem, so it is not surprising that it is
naturally selected for. A Lakota leader defines 'mastery' -- the need
to build on personal competence -- as one of the four 'capacities' of
'the circle of courage' that gives each of us heart, self-confidence,
and spirit.
What is it that determines this special role, whether it be ironing,
running, painting or writing or giving care to others? It is, I think,
a product of four things:
- our natural talents -- things we inherently find easy to do well,
- our learnings and experience -- which come from study, but more importantly from practice,
- our passion -- the desire and focus and dedication to excel at doing this one thing, and
- our audience -- the degree to which this role is needed, appreciated, respected and encouraged.
 The
search for one's personal role, our place in community, is often a
lifelong quest. Today, when it is so easy to be anonymous or left
alone, and in which we move from community to community often, the
fourth element -- our audience -- can be the hardest to achieve. When
we have no audience, when we do not know where we belong, we are left
to choose what we will do in abstraction. As a result, many of us
devote large parts of our lives to study and diligent work only to find
we have no audience, and that no matter how great we see our own talent
and acquired skill, it was all wasted time.
The task is much easier when we find our audience, the community with
the need for what we can do, first. In this respect we are all entrepreneurs
at heart. We are all seeking to find something that is needed, and for
which we have talent and passion, and the rest is just hard work. Or
rather, it isn't hard work,
because our passion, our natural talent, and the recognition of its
value by our community makes it easy work, obvious and important. As we
learn, lifelong, to do it well and then exceptionally well, we are
merely following our heart, our destiny.
The characters depicted in the vidcap above, from Aaron Sorkin's comedy Sports Night, have found, in journalism, the intersection of talent, experience, passion and audience. That's why they can, and do, say That's What I Do, That's Who I Am. How many of us, in the real world, can say the same, without a sigh, a doubt, a frown?
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