Work and Utility…

There is another worthwhile distinction to be made when we consider the “utility” of our efforts: even very rough and mediocre work is important as a step toward later development—we simply cannot produce our ideal without practice. This is a straight foward proposition, but one that we consistently forget as we battle perfectionism, a world in which so many of our desires are attained instantly, and a society obsessed with its productive capacity (in academia, why is publishing itself always more important than what we publish?).

One of my art professors would consistently tell us to expect “the ugly stage” that every work must experience, as well as "the ugly phases" that individual artists experience. He said that the greatest obstacle toward developing as an artist was to give up at this stage instead of understanding that it is a necessary part of the process. We had to learn to patiently keep working on projects which were not immediately fulfilling our ideal instead of tearing them up and walking away for good.

It's dangerous and delusional to disassociate all of the beginning stages of learning from the finished product. The modern world loves production and symbols of achievement, but often makes the grave mistake of disassociating these objects from their creators. We love someone (an author or film star) not for themselves, but for what they have produced. Similarly, we tend to think of how we can obtain similar trappings of success before thinking of who we want to become. This is the even more fundamental danger than that of divorcing work from the ends of an art, to divorce our work from our person hood, from all of the other facets of our lives. It shows how deeply Machiavellian we have become when we value effects so highly and care so little about how or why they came about. Materialism and individualism collide to form a painfully misconstrued picture of reality.

As a perfect example of this divide, I once heard Walter Hooper (CS Lewis’ secretary) recount a conversation he had with a lady visitor to the Kilns after Lewis’ death. After talking about the many difficult people which Lewis supported throughout his life through funds and friendship, the lady remarked something to the effect that “It was too bad Lewis’ time was wasted on these difficult relationships, or else he could have written more books.” Hooper asked the woman in reply, “But what books could he have written? Certainly not the Four Loves.”

Who we are, in all of our many roles and interactions, effects the quality and purpose of everything we do.