Pride and Process

Something I've been kind of poking on-and-off at is what it means to live a meaningful life, and how one defines that, and how one gets there. I'm going to poke clumsily at some aspects of that question in this blog, and yes, I'm aware that it's clumsy, and no, this isn't meant to be universal. It's just me talking through some things that have worked for me and that may or may not work for anyone else.

Today, pride and purpose and process, beginning with two observations:

(1) One of the things that happens when people learn that you are "a writer" (meaning, for present purposes, someone who's had one or more books traditionally published) is that lots of them will confide that they also wish to be "a writer" and ask how you achieve that. And the standard answer (which is, again, simultaneously facile, true, and misleading) is that "if you write, you are a writer."

(2) One of the things that college admissions people supposedly look for is a student who demonstrates sustained passion for one or two endeavors, rather than superficial engagement in a bunch of scattershot activities. For a long time I really didn't understand what that was all about. Now I do, and I wish I could go back and tell my seventeen-year-old self the cheat code to that particular minigame, which confounded me for the longest time.

Anyway, the reason I bring up those two points is this: they're both founded on the fact that, paradoxically, you get much better results and will be much happier in life if you focus on the process rather than the outcome. On doing, rather than on having done.

Staking your sense of self-worth on whether or not you can get a book published is a pretty common pitfall. I mean, I get it; when my first book was out on submission, I really really really wanted somebody to buy it. But, for me, it was never like not getting published was going to destroy my identity as a person. The point wasn't to be A Published Author. The point was to try and write a story that I could have some (perverse, masochistic) fun writing. The point was the process, not the outcome. Write, and you will be a writer. Facile, but true.

Similarly, what I eventually realized (much too late to do me any good, but hey) those college admissions officers were looking for was the same thing: a person driven by the joy of doing rather than the perceived status of "having done"; someone who was engaged by the process of discovering and practicing and the pleasure of doing a thing for its own sake.

Sometimes this means you get really good at a thing. Sometimes it doesn't. In either case, that isn't the point. Gerald Mazorati has written movingly about the pleasures of

improving at a demanding skill or set of skills — a craft, a discipline. I have in mind something that will take years to get proficient at, something that there is a correct way of doing, handed down for generations or even ages, and for which there is no way for you to create shortcuts with your cleverness or charm. Playing the cello, maybe. Or cabinetry. Or, in my case, tennis, serious tennis.

Mazorati took up tennis in his mid-50s. He knew going in that he was never going to be great at the sport, and he found that knowledge freeing:

Here’s a blessing of late-middle age (and there are few): You will not be inhibited from improving by the perceptions of others. No one is paying attention to you! Haven’t you noticed? And unlike a pro athlete or master-level practitioner, you will not be committing to anything — be it swimming or judo or open-sea sailing — that you have either any serious talent for or the body to get great at. You are not young, and learning and improving at a sport or activity will not make you feel young in any physical way. In fact, you will feel more consciously and intensely to be of a certain age, which I happen to think is a benefit.

[...]

Which brings us to the beauty of a disciplined effort at improvement and, I think, the only guaranteed benefit of finding something, as I found in tennis, to learn and commit to: You seize time and you make it yours. You counter the narrative of diminishment and loss with one of progress and bettering. You spend hours removed from the past (there is so much of it now) and, in a sense, the present (and all its attendant responsibilities and aches), and immerse yourself in the as yet. In this new pursuit of yours, practice is your practice: It comes to determine the way you eat and sleep and shape your days. It is not your life, but one of the lives that make up your life, and the only one for which looking ahead, at least for a little while longer, is something done without wistfulness or a flinch.

Process, not outcome.

There are several excellent benefits to approaching life in this way. One, as Mazorati noted, is that "you counter the narrative of diminishment and loss with one of progress and bettering" -- true not only in the context of aging, but whenever one might be tempted to take the measure of one's own life and find it wanting. It might not be great today; it can, at least in this specific context (and really, that's enough to sustain hope) be better tomorrow. Another, also as he noted, is that it affords a certain discipline and structure that can be invaluable to those feeling directionless. You are on a journey, and that pulls you forward; you must master certain skills along the way, and that gives you purpose.

It teaches you resilience. You learn that failure stings mightily, but that it's survivable. A failure is something that happens, but it is not who you are.

And you learn that there's a deep satisfaction in attaining the small triumphs and moments of beauty that are earned along the way. It is satisfying to work at something and come out of it with a delicious pie or a cleverly knitted hat or an improbable, beautiful shot in a tennis game. It's satisfying in a way that only comes out of repeated failures and struggles. It isn't really the pride of a perfect performance I'm talking about here -- no pie I ever bake is going to be as perfect as one of Magpie Bakery or the Hungry Pigeon's; pros are pros for good reason -- but of seeing your own personal improvement and understanding, for yourself, what it took to get there.

Focusing on process takes you down unexpected, interesting, and occasionally rewarding roads. Sometimes you do get good at a thing, and sometimes that opens up new opportunities. Even if you don't, the pursuit of process often introduces you to whole new worlds of teachers and fellow students, of unimagined expertise in the most arcane subjects, of new perspectives on the world and previously unseen connections between facts and ideas. You find a community bound together by enthusiasms, and that's worth a lot in this atomized world.

The outcomes become secondary, almost unimportant. They're markers of where you've been, but they aren't the endpoints of the journey. And the opinions of others, outside of your coaches and knowledgeable colleagues (which are valued for information and not for judgment), are of no consequence at all.

A funny thing happens once you get to a place you've been headed for a long time: you crest the hill, you reach the landmark, and... you find that the trail keeps going on the other side. If you're focused on process, this is an excellent development: there's more to do! Farther to go! But if you're focused on outcome, it can be crushing: there is not and will never be an end. Not really. There's always another mark, a little higher and harder, just a tiny bit out of reach.

And that's the paradox of pride and process. If you're focused on the journey, on learning and bettering yourself as its own pleasure rather than to reach some external objective, you're more likely to reach your goals. You are, in short, more likely to do something worth being proud of.

But you also become less dependent on that. You realize that the external markers are just that, external and arbitrary and ultimately unimportant. You become a person who can be proud of achievements, but who doesn't need to be.

It's like a koan in a kung-fu movie: to achieve pride, you must forsake pride.

But it's true, or at least it was for me.