DRAFT
āAmateurā is my Word for my 44th orbit.
The word amateur comes from the Latin word amare which means āto loveā. The French coined the word in the 18th century to mean:
āOne who cultivates and participates in something but does not pursue it professionally or with an eye to gain.ā ā Online Etymology Dictionary
It can be used both aspirationally and in a disparaging manner. The amateur is the foil to the professional, the expert, the authority, which also have both positive and negative connotations. There are many strong cases made for the expert over the amateur, and there are many circumstances where I agree with these cases. Itās tough to argue that expertise plays a valuable role in todayās world with so many complex problems.
What good is an amateur, then? Experts are useful when the domains of knowledge, wisdom, and craft needed to thrive in a given situation are all well-understood. They are less useful when the chaotic nature of reality reveals a new crucial domain of expertise that hasnāt yet been reckoned with. Experts of other fields may swoop in, steeped in Dunning-Kruger effect, and attempt to co-opt their expertise in the other domain for one that also applies here. Sometimes that works, other times it makes things worse. The amateur can enter the domain with a desire to see and understand the new landscape with a beginnerās eyes, and clear a path for understanding to build up again, from the ground up.
The case for the amateur is one that looks at our current world and recognizes many crucial domains of understanding that havenāt been reckoned with yet, and actively searches for them out of love, and not necessarily in order to gain personally or professionally from them.
Every year I come up with a motto for the year. Last yearās was āAll in and with the flowā. This year, I participated in Dr. Jason Foxās Choose One Word programme and believe that this is just the enhancement my yearly motto needed to carry me into the 15th year of self-reflective birthdays. Past years include:
As I get older, a few things seem to be happening. One: Iāve accrued a toolbox of āthings that seem to workā that become increasingly salient to me whenever a new problem appears before me. Two: When I look back on how well āthe way I did things successfully beforeā actually do when applied to the new challenges, Iām not seeing a very strong correlation. Things that worked in my career the first two decades of my professional life (whether it be as an entrepreneur, product leader, or writer) donāt necessarily work when I try to apply them to my current professional life. Same goes for things that worked in the first 10 years of my marriage, and the first 9, or 3, years of parenting. Things that worked in politics, and consumption of information, and maintaining health, etc also seem to be failing more often than not. Too much chaos has been injected into the system, and a second wave of problems caused by our refusal to try new approaches is added on as an aftershock to the chaos. The pandemicās chaotic move on reality has turned us all into beginners.
It feels like a good time to leave our expertise at the door (unless youāre a doctor, essential worker, care-taker, etcā¦ those domains remain relatively stable in terms of how to function effectively).
Beyond thatā¦ bring in the amateurs, I say!
I will pay you $1 (or add it to a pool that gets donated to a good cause) if you catch me doing anything that I am doing in order to appear professional or as an expert in a way that it is clear that I do not intrinsically love doing that thing directly.