Wu wei
No, I’m not a Taoist.
Or, perhaps I’m a deeply committed Taoist, precisely because I don’t think of myself as one. (See what I did there?)
Either way, I’ve greatly benefited from dipping my toes in Taoist literature over the years. One concept that has resonated with me is Wu wei. When I was younger, (with a much less nuanced worldview) I remember a very intelligent friend describing Taoist philosophy to me. At the time, my stunted ability to be thoughtful led me to conclude that it was circular nonsense.
Ironically, it was my own, narrow worldview that turned out to be nonsense, but that’s for another time.
Lately, I’ve been struck by Wu wei’s deep beauty, and poignant insight.
I recently started a new project at work that has me feeling like a hobbyist software developer. I’m surrounded by experienced people, doing artfully complicated stuff, and I am quite clearly the weak link in the intelligence/experience chain. It’s such a wonderful, visceral reminder of what it means to be a beginner.
The beautiful thing is that I’ve been here before, many times. I know this feeling of discomfort. I know that feeling of a bruised, sore ego. I know this feeling of inadequacy. The humility of changing rubrics to something that accurately contextualizes your real skill.
It’s an expected response to the experience of struggling.
I’m curious about all sorts of things, and I’ve been a beginner in many different domains, many times.
In a precious few domains, I know the satisfaction of mastery that’s on the other side of this struggle.
In a way, I’ve started to abstract this cycle of curiosity. Whether it was learning guitar, or audio engineering, or photography, or video production, or soccer, or kiteboarding, or cycling, or a new language, or how to be a loving parent, or a better husband…there is a tidal cycle– an ebb and flow, to the process of curiosity->exploration->struggle->proficiency->deeper struggle->mastery->curiosity.
What’s interesting is that the more I experience the cycle, the more that I realize that mastery isn’t the point. Or, rather, if you make mastery a target goal to be achieved, then you miss the patient, thoughtful, unassuming value of the cycle itself.
I can’t count how many goals that I set for myself over the years that I didn’t achieve for various reasons. But every one of those failures, led to serendipitous achievements in areas that I never would have guessed.
And even where there were genuine failures, they were still just one part of the tide, in a cycle of curiosity.
