“-and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded” man. This isn’t just an epigram – life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.”
Yes, I have jumped on The Great Gatsby band wagon recently. How could you not? What with the new movie, Stephen Colbert’s inaugural book club selection, etc etc. As I rediscovered this book, that to be fair I loved even back in high school, I am falling in love with all of the little quips I am discovering in the pages. In particular I found this quote, very early in the first chapter, to particularly stand out.
Well-rounded. What a concept. As a classic type A, overachiever I always considered myself to be fairly well-rounded. In high school I played sports, was in theater, was active in church, participated on student council – all those wonderful things that help to round out a person. However, there was always a sense that I had, of being okay at a lot of things and longing to be amazing at just one thing. Sure, my “well-roundedness” helped me get into college, and then helped with scholarships, grad school, a teaching assistantship and gaining employment – but at the end of the day, is it really a good thing?
Sometimes I think that for all my well-rounding, all I have to show for it is being the world’s best small talker. Whatever it is you are interested in or want to chat about, I can probably hold up my end of the conversation – because I have literally dabbled in it all. This however, I do not find particularly useful outside of a 30 second elevator ride. Oh how I long to be an expert – the very best at a particular task. You cannot be the best at everything, you have to choose one thing, and most experts or those that excel at an activity, decided on what that activity would be at a very young age. Malcolm Gladwell talks about experts and those people who are truly outliers in his rightly titled book, Outliers. He proposes that in order to be the best or be an expert, you must put in 10,000 hours at least at that task. Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but that is A LOT of time! Possible of course, but phew – that would be working 8 hours a day at a single task for 1,250 days – nonstop!
So well-rounded kind of sounds crappy if you want to be the best. 10,000 hours for each of the activities that put together your well-roundedness seems like you will spend an entire lifetime working towards something. No, I think Gatsby had it right – “life is much more successfully looked at through a single window-“. The difficult question then becomes, what window shall I look through?
optimism is worth it. 