Sunday, September 10, 2006

Practice

I was out to do some shopping this afternoon, when CBC started interviewing someone about his writing (I think). Unfortunately, I wasn't in the car long enough to follow along too much.


They started talking about practice and how it relates to spirituality. Now I'm not a spiritual kind of guy, but it got me thinking about practice and what it leads to. I'll try and explain.


We generally practice something to get better at it. Over time, we hope to go from dufus to expert in whatever skill it is. If we keep it up, it seems to become a part of us, and we start to explore and experiment in all the nicks and crannies of our technique for doing whatever we're trying to learn to do.


If we're learning to golf, the first thing is just learning how to hit the ball without driving half the landscaping along with it. Once we can do that, we can start noticing little things about the swing that we can change to make it more directional or increase distance. By the time someone is a pro, their body just seems to know what it has to do. A pro player seems to focus on what he wants to accomplish, and his body follows through with practiced precision.


Same thing with writing, riding a bike, or doing mathematics. There are always mountains of nuance to conquer once you are accomplished with the basics. With practice you start to see the joy of doing, as well as some of the paths you might take to get even better.And more practice helps you do that.


I guess that's a kind of spirituality. Does that make any sense?


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