Gratitude Post - March 20, 2023

I'm grateful for trainers!

Whether you're being trained for a new job or in a new technique for a hobby you enjoy, you often engage with someone to help train you.  This trainer, more often than not, will have a set path in mind that you will follow to achieve mastery of the task they're training you on.  If you're being trained in calculous, you first have to know how to count, then how to do addition and subtraction, than multiplication and division, and the path progresses through to mastery of calculous.  The same can be said of more artistic endeavours: before you can paint a masterpiece you must first be trained on how to distinguish colours, what it artistic composition means, and how to achieve certain effects with what paintbrushes and what techniques.

But are those expected and planned paths absolutely necessary?  In my experience, though those expectations are the standard way to achieve competence, and even mastery of a given ability, they are in no way the only way to do it.  There are many who bypass a step or two, or even a whole slew of them along the way.  In fact, if the standard path were all that was ever followed we'd have missed out on a lot of the "greats" or the inventions that become common place today.  If we had only done math with the use of an abacus without any potential deviation, we probably wouldn't have calculators.  And if we only painted with the use of paintbrushes, we'd have lost out on a lot of the artwork of David Pollock.  And in our own lives, without experimentation outside of the expected path set out by trainers, we likely won't achieve our full potential or see what new advancements can be made in whatever areas we choose to pursue.  It is the expectations of others, the expectations of standard practice and long followed patterns, that in many cases we must choose to do the reverse of as we strive to do and be our very best.