by Jane Gassner of ByJane
Reinvention: that seems the buzzword of the moment, and oh, how I do relate. More magazine has devoted an entire issue to it, offering Arianna Huffington as the ultimate serial reinventor. They’ve even got a contest going, Tell Us About Your Second Act. Like Ms Huffington, however, I’m on my fourth or maybe fifth act. And like Kelly Corrigan, writing in O magazine, I feel somewhat sheepish about the way I have never been able to settle on just one thing to do. I write, I edit, I make art, and I make jewelry. I also garden, knit and, hey, this website, MidLifeBloggers, I’m making that as well. My days are filled from morning to night, but never with just one thing. I am, in fact, constitutionally incapable of any kind of singular focus. My life has been lived, and what successes I’ve had, follow a shotgun methodology: I spray the woods and where the buckshot lands, I go gather the goods. I resist the sneers of those who call me dilettante and I insist my way is The Way. But secretly, as I said, I feel guilty.
Now, here comes Ingrid E. Cummings telling me that not only do I have a place in the world, more people should be like me! In The Vigorous Mind, Cummings argues for “a return to a Renaissance perspective, when the ideal was to be well-rounded.” Her thesis is contained within the subtitle: “Cross-Train Your Brain to Break Through Mental, Emotional, and Professional Boundaries.” Such cross-training, claims Cummings, is an antidote to the singularity of purpose that has created hyper-focused specialists, a state that may lead to success, but also leads to sterility and burnout. Instead, Cummings is positing a world in which we follow our natural inclinations, and then some.
There are, she says, two kinds of people: Generalists and Specialists.
“Generalists view the world as if from an airplane flying at thirty-six thousand feet, and thus excel at identifying opportunities and threats. Specialists are implementers, thriving at the grassroots level. Specialists are subject to the bias that comes from soaking in their own vat of expertise. . . . Generalists are subject to missing nuance due to their lack of in-depth expertise. Generalists typically are not grade-A implementers or detail hounds. So specialists are about depth; generalists are about breadth. At the risk of oversimplifying: generalists define problems and specialists solve them.”
Our Western culture, particularly here in the United States, privileges the specialists, but really, as Cummings goes on to say, “generalists and specialists complement each other. You want some of both at work. You want some of both in your own makeup, ideally.”
So, in The Vigorous Mind, Ingrid Cummings sets out to help us–be we generalist or specialist–achieve that complementarity in ourselves. She has created a methodology, using a form of the Zen principle of kaizen, along with a technique she calls Triumph in Twenty. Through this we can wend our way through the Seven Imperatives that Cummings claims are the foundation of the attaining the balanced life she espouses. She calls this goal the Vitruvian Capability, so named after da Vinci’s famous symbol of the Renaissance man.
I applaud Cummings’ thesis. She’s made me feel much better about myself, that’s for sure. Too, I’m always up for anything Zen; just as I’m always down on the self-help genre that spawns alliterative catch phrases. However, f you’re a Specialist, or you’ve found yourself landlocked in your life–you might want to try cross-training your brain. And if you do, then this book will be your training manual.
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