So, I’ve been thinking a lot about mastery.

It started when I was talking with my dear friend, Jack Franicevich. A lot of my better trains of thought often start this way. Jack told me that one of the largest things he learned in the Torrey Honors Institute was how little he actually mastered. Now, I’m a die-hard optimist who wants everybody to be fully convinced that they can do it, so this didn’t sit well with me, and was on the back of my mind for a while.

At the same time, I continued to progress in my art skills. I was beginning to notice, partly because of my own arrogance and partly because I was actually improving that my art was beginning to look like the digital art masters that I admired, at least to me. As my art progressed, the method by which these masters made their art was becoming increasingly clear to me. Before this, I was convinced that there had to be some kind of witch-craft involved in order to get your drawing to look that good. At least a magic Photoshop brush. However, with my skill improving, the way by which one might make a digital painting masterpiece was becoming more clear to me. In other words, the fog covering the path to the art I wanted to make was lifted, and I saw the path did not contain any spells or magic, but instead application of the talents and skills I already knew combined with hard work.

Considering myself enlightened in the ways of mastery, I sent Jack a text and scheduled a meeting for the following week.

Before the meeting, I did some more hard thinking. I came to the conclusion that some understanding of skill depends on how far along you are yourself. For example, when I first started attending Plein Air art exhibits, I became convinced that they were just putting loose brushstrokes on canvas to mimic life, and that I could probably do it just as well (yes, I know I’m unbearably arrogant.) I had no understanding of the level of mastery they were working at because my skill was so inadequate. Therefore, understanding of the level of skill a master is working at is only possible when you yourself acquire a new level of skill. In other words, right when you think you’ve made it and have seen past all the magic, the work of the masters is revealed to be farther above your skill level than you thought was even possible.

I took all these thoughts to Jack, and he listened and then blew me away with what he responded with.

He reminded me that mastery is simply a human term. For example, he said, humans set the height of a basketball hoop so that only a certain percentage of people could dunk it. It’s completely arbitrary, and if we raised the bar even by a couple feet nobody could do it. In the same way, sure Shakespeare can be considered a master of poetry, but only among humans. I mean, what, he only really did plays and sonnets? And only in one language? I shook my head and laughed.

Jack smiled. “Humility, then, is learning to compare yourself to God.”

This is why I love talking to Jack.