Two days ago I was asked this question: “How do you know if you are good at something?”
A long essay about being good at tennis versus being good at teaching began to form in my head.
Like tennis, the measure of being good at some things (games won, money made attention you attract to yourself) is clearer than whatever measures being good at things like teaching: playing the game with joy, positively influencing others, creating something of aesthetic worth. Everybody knows the banker is rich and thus good at money. No one really knows what the artist is on to and so what’s good with them is harder to determine. Generally, we confer more status in the short term on those who are good at the clear things, more long term status to those who are good at the things that are harder to define.
Shakespeare, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mozart . . . How many tennis players can you name from back in the day?
Nietzsche famously said that “some men are born posthumously,” but maybe some people are good at tomorrow. Until your students die and look back on a life made better because of you, can you say you are good at teaching?
Likely the question of how you know if you are good at something really just fronts for the question: How do I know if I am good at life? And a long essay on how you know you are good at something would probe this larger question too.
I’d also like to write that essay because part of being good at something is pursuing it to a worthwhile end.
Worth your while? And that of one other person? Isn’t that one way you know?