Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea moved me profoundly in my college years. The thought of it now evokes the same emotions, though I have not read it in all these years.
Mastery is like that. Mastery elevates the ordinary to the extraordinary, creating something beautiful that did not previously exist. Experiencing mastery can make your heart stop, take your breath away, bring a sigh of recognition.
I love to watch people in their area of mastery. They are in the zone, they have a different aspect in their voice and face when they are doing what they are do well. It is not a focus on self; on the contrary, it is beyond self, something possible only when I’m not self aware. Have you watched someone in their area of mastery? what about mastery God has brought about in you? A time you were fully alive and present and perhaps only afterward you said, “Wow, that was awesome.”
Hemingway was challenged to write the shortest story possible; he produced this masterful six-word short story.
“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
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