Counting the Hours

I was recently reading Mary Beth Shaw's 10,000 Hours post and it got me thinking a lot about what goes in to really mastering something. We do live in a culture where instant gratification reigns supreme and we hate to wait for things. A lot of people become easily frustrated when things don't go as they want. And I'll readily admit to doing so myself. Thus many of us don't want to take the time to truly master something.

It's funny though, just how much patience differs from person to person and what we are willing to take the time to do. Perhaps this is somehow related to mastery as well? In letting go of control, by accepting what we are doing in the moment rather than trying to impose our will on whatever it is we are trying to do, we can achieve a different kind of mastery. The time spent no longer matters because we exist in the moment. Mary Beth Shaw expressed this sentiment thusly:

I revel in the process, the journey, hour after hour. Creating layers one at a time. Building texture. Feeling the paint, watching it dry, playing with dripping ink. It's what I do; it's who I am. I have many many more hours to travel.

I think that taking the time to develop a skill is important, but I also think that there is a different sense of one's own ability and achievement that is attained when time is no longer relevant. When we aren't counting the hours and we're allowing ourselves to live in the moment of what we're doing and to just do it. To simply be. Perhaps true mastery evolves in part from our spending enough time to learn something so that we no longer feel a need to count the hours...