I love reading and thinking about this as I have also loved (quietly and at a distance) loved seeing you become a runner. As you know, my journey was similar. I hated running in high school and college and then learned to love it in grad school and wound up running a bunch of marathons and shorter races. Part of my story is that I lost a bunch of weight and that made running much easier for a bunch of reasons, but it's also the case that I actually came to enjoy it and the challenge that it presented in terms of endurance and discipline. I think there's maybe a missing term between effort and talent: technique. This has become apparent to me in terms of running and now kettlebells: technique is the habituated and mostly unthought practice that allows one to efficiently transform effort into performance. Technique isn't effort--I put in way more effort when I lacked it--but it also isn't talent; I've never been a talented runner, but I am a vastly more efficient one now than when I started and the same, frankly, goes for my kettlebell work.
I think about this frequently in terms of my classes too and what I try to teach my students. Reading difficult texts and asking good questions are things that require habituated, unthought habits of mind. They are reflexes that move beneath the skin of thought. Similarly, ethical relations of care, mercy, and compassion are all cultivated as habits through practice, not simply because, in any particular moment, we have an overpowering and enduring desire to do right (ethical grit?) or are vastly more empathetic than other people (ethical talent?). I tell my students that the reason they shouldn't do a trivial ethical wrong they know is wrong even if it's unlikely to harm anyone is primarily that it deforms their ethical practice and makes them ethically slovenly and make them less likely to do right when it really does matter. Feminist virtue ethics ftw! Much love to you and yours.
I love reading and thinking about this as I have also loved (quietly and at a distance) loved seeing you become a runner. As you know, my journey was similar. I hated running in high school and college and then learned to love it in grad school and wound up running a bunch of marathons and shorter races. Part of my story is that I lost a bunch of weight and that made running much easier for a bunch of reasons, but it's also the case that I actually came to enjoy it and the challenge that it presented in terms of endurance and discipline. I think there's maybe a missing term between effort and talent: technique. This has become apparent to me in terms of running and now kettlebells: technique is the habituated and mostly unthought practice that allows one to efficiently transform effort into performance. Technique isn't effort--I put in way more effort when I lacked it--but it also isn't talent; I've never been a talented runner, but I am a vastly more efficient one now than when I started and the same, frankly, goes for my kettlebell work.
I think about this frequently in terms of my classes too and what I try to teach my students. Reading difficult texts and asking good questions are things that require habituated, unthought habits of mind. They are reflexes that move beneath the skin of thought. Similarly, ethical relations of care, mercy, and compassion are all cultivated as habits through practice, not simply because, in any particular moment, we have an overpowering and enduring desire to do right (ethical grit?) or are vastly more empathetic than other people (ethical talent?). I tell my students that the reason they shouldn't do a trivial ethical wrong they know is wrong even if it's unlikely to harm anyone is primarily that it deforms their ethical practice and makes them ethically slovenly and make them less likely to do right when it really does matter. Feminist virtue ethics ftw! Much love to you and yours.
Of course I love this. The stats test!!!!