A Muse meant.

This was originally posted on my website, but some might find it interesting.

Money, clothes, books... These things will all help round your character, but alone will do nothing. There is a difference between knowing and understanding. I'd wager it is that gap which holds so many back. Learn to understand what you ALREADY know and have known for longer than you probably thought and the rest falls into place.

A teacher at school once told me that "You may not progress as fast as everyone else in PE, but so long as you put in the effort you will get good grades". This was when I was in year 8, over weight and ~ 5'7. At the time I didn't think much to it, and accepted it, I was smart enough to realise I wasn't quite the same as others around me and didn't feel like I could change that fact. The year passes and I go through a growth spurt, loosing a lot of weight in the process. The teachers are full of praise, but I hadn't put much effort in. I couldn't understand why my expecations had been dampened so much, I felt like the whole thing was wrong. The situation highlighted to me something very strange. They were trying to avoid hurting my feelings instead of pushing me. What if I hadn't been lucky enough to have that growth spurt?

Now I'm older and in the position where I regularly push others out of their comfort zones and I begin to understand why. When you push someone, their negative wiring tells them to accept that they cannot progress. Yet the duality of this acceptance of negativity and a butt load of HOPE means they will invest time, money and anything else but true effort.

We all progress at very different speeds and are at different stages. My initial story is to demonstrate how the same situation is viewed differently based on your achievement level. As individuals we react based on our belief about ourself, and our belief about life and the world in general. This in turn effects how we will react to being taught and teaching any given skill.

When I was younger and had just started working in IT, I worked in a software group mostly full of professional software developers who were used to dealing with PCs and windows and could figure out very simple sentences like "Just hit start>run>msconfig and untick anything the company has installed over the network". I learned a lot when I had to write a user guide on the same topic for a larger audience. I was stunned by just ho methodical you have to be. Including a screenshot and description for everything in full prose, no short hand allowed. It took me literally weeks of trying and failing before I completed what should have been a simple task, because I could not see PCs any other way than how I had grown up with them.

This has paralells within life. Those at earlier progression levels come with their own beleif set, and those further progressed have an alternate beleif set. In the middle however, there is a breakdown of communication.

If we take the user guide scenario as an example.

The users of the guide were frustrated by the lack of clarity, and the aloofness with which the informaiton was presented. Why couldn't it just be clear?

The writer of the guide was frustrated by the users lack of understanding. How could they not get the simplest of tasks?

I believe this demonstrates the gap between those progressed in their social skills and those still progressing. The classic example is the natural who says "Just talk to her, Jesus!". I have begun to understand this frustration over the last year, because the irony of the tactics and analysis, is that its all to find simplicity. Its learning to let go. Its not doing, its being. Yet I refuse to let go of the memories of frustration in other aspects, and the students POV. What I write this in aid of; is the hope that prospective students of life will realize that communicating something understood on a level beyond the cerebral is difficult for instructors and that WE need YOUR help too.