You Can Lead A Horse To Water

But it Takes Forever to Drown One

The idea of being a thing is always easier than the work of being the thing.

The day to day work is not glamorous and oftentimes is not particularly fun. Most of the breakthroughs and success in growing a skill are small and personal.

However, in the few moments when you reach the big tipping points, where your personal successes aligns with a visible success, people always show up asking how you did it, and wanting to learn how they to can do it.

They’re never happy to hear “put in years and years of work, then get lucky.”

It’s something I am still working to temper: managing my expectations and hopes for helping every random person who inquires.

Instinctually, I want to provide as many resources as I can to anyone who is aspiring to do something similar to a thing I’ve done before—because often, I only achieved what I did because I had generous help and mentorship from others.

But I also have learned that some people say they want to be the thing with very little interest (or enjoyment) in doing the work of being the thing. They say “I want to be a writer,” and what they mean is “I want to have written something people love.”

But when you explain they must write and prepare and learn and study and design and reflect and write and write and write, they lose interest. They don’t say “I want to write.” They continue to ask “but how do I become a writer.” And here, you can give as many resources and suggestions and connections as possible, and that person still will be limited by their own reticence to do the long and difficult work.

There’s an idiom in Chinese: 台上十分钟, 台下十年功. 10 minutes onstage, 10 years work offstage.

It’s been one thing to understand this intellectually, and another to be arriving at a level of mastery in my chosen fields where I finally feel like I have some handle of what I’m doing—which then opens up just how much more I have to learn and master.

The hard part of mentorship is recognizing when those asking for help are not there yet or perhaps are not truly interested in learning, and being patient and good at recognizing those who hunger for help and guidance to the work.

You cannot help those who do not wish to work to help themselves. I’m still learning not to pack meals and try to give them to everyone who wanders by, but to lay out the banquet wherever possible, and to offer more to those who come and asks for more. 💙