The Subtle Spectrum

Some statuses are black and white. You're either a president or you're not. You either own a car or you don't. You're either a virgin or you're not. But more often than not, your status exists in a spectrum (and some people could argue even the examples I gave are such).

One of the stories I really enjoy are ones where a person is on the path toward "mastery" of some kind. Often it is some kind of competitive or performance skill, and they spend their life pushing to become greater than all others, to be the best, since one cannot be a master if others are better than them.

There are a number of good endings to such stories. It could be realizing that mastery of any art is meaningless without friends/love. It could be realizing that mastery is about doing the best you can, even if you are not the best on earth. It could be finding out that at a certain level, people reach an equality where success is determined by luck more than anything else.

I like these stories because they hit on a very important aspect of life. We are always trying or wanting to do better. Our common assumption in life is that we click over into things like mastery, the same way that, once you know something or you have seen something, it is permanent. You now have the experience and knowledge and you are fundamentally changed. But the reality is that most endeavors are not skills, but sets of skills. And the skills we learn can be done at varying levels of quality.

We are constantly moving about a subtle spectrum, one which we have no idea how far out it extends, so we know only how far we have come, but never how far we have left to go.