Thinking back to her childhood, she could remember a sense of expansion—learning about other cultures and their history, learning about her own culture. There seemed to be no limits to what she could explore. Now, it was the opposite. Worn down by work and depression, everything was tightening around her until all she could think about was her own tiny world and how sorry it had become. Soon it would be hard to imagine anything besides cleaning houses. But the paradox is that the mind is essentially free. It can travel anywhere, across time and space. If she kept it confined to her narrow circumstances, it would be her own fault. No matter how impossible it seemed, she could not let go of her dream to become a writer. To realize this dream, she would have to educate herself and keep her mental horizons expanding by whatever means necessary. A writer needs knowledge of the world. And so, thinking in this way, Zora Neale Hurston proceeded to create for herself one of the most remarkable self-directed apprenticeships in history.
Since the only jobs she could get at that moment were housecleaning, she managed to land work in the homes of the wealthiest white people in town—there she would find plenty of books. Snatching a few moments here and there, she would read portions of these books on the sly, quickly memorizing passages so she could have something to go over in her head in her free time. One day, she discovered a discarded copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost in a garbage can. It was as good as gold for her. She took it wherever she went, and read it over and over. In this way, her mind did not stagnate; she had created for herself a strange sort of literary education.
In 1915, she landed a job as a lady’s maid to the lead singer of an all-white traveling troupe of performers. For most, this would mean yet another subservient position, but for Hurston it was a godsend. Many of the members of the troupe were well educated. There were books everywhere to read and interesting conversations to overhear. By observing closely, she could see what passed for sophistication in the white world, and how she could make herself charming to them with her stories of Eatonville and her knowledge of literature. As part of the job, they had her trained as a manicurist. She would later use this skill to find jobs in the barbershops in Washington D.C., near the Capitol. The clientele included the most powerful politicians of the time, and they would often gossip as if she weren’t even there. For her, this was almost as good as reading any book—it taught her more about human nature, power, and the inner workings of the white world.
Her world was slowly expanding, but still there were severe limitations on where she could work, on the books she could find, on the people she could meet and associate with. She was learning, but her mind was unstructured and her thoughts unorganized. What she needed, she decided, was formal education and the discipline this would bring her. She could try to patch a degree together in various night schools, but what she really wanted was to regain what had been taken away from her by her father. At twenty-five she looked young for her age, and so chopping off ten years in her application, she gained admittance to a free public high school in Maryland as a freshman.
She would have to make the most of this schooling—her future depended on it. She would read many more books than were required, and work particularly hard on any writing assignments. She would befriend teachers and professors with the charm she had established over the years, making the kinds of connections that had eluded her in the past. In this way, a few years later, she gained admittance to Howard University, the leading institution of black higher learning, and made the acquaintance of key figures in the black literary world. With the discipline she had gained in school, she began to write short stories. Now, with the help of one of her connections, she got a short story published in a prestigious Harlem literary journal. Seizing opportunities whenever they appeared, she decided to leave Howard and move to Harlem, where all of the leading black writers and artists were living. This would add another dimension to the world she was finally able to explore.
Over the years, Hurston had made a study of powerful, important people—black and white—and how to impress them. Now in New York, she used this skill to great effect, charming several wealthy white patrons of the arts. Through one of these patrons she was offered the opportunity to enroll in Barnard College, where she could finish her college education. She would be the first and only black student there. It had been her strategy to keep moving, keep expanding—the world could quickly close in on you if you stayed put or stagnated. And so she accepted the offer. The white students at Barnard were intimidated in her presence—her knowledge of so many fields far exceeded their own. Several professors in the anthropology department fell under her spell, and sent her on a tour through the South to gather folk tales and stories. She used the trip to immerse herself in hoodoo, the southern black version of voodoo, and in other ritual practices. She wanted to deepen her knowledge of black culture in all of its richness and variety.
In 1932, with the Depression raging in New York and her employment opportunities drying up, she decided to return to Eatonville. There she could live cheaply, and the atmosphere would be inspiring. Borrowing money from friends, she proceeded to work on her first novel. From somewhere deep inside, all of her past experiences, her lengthy and multifaceted apprenticeship, rose to the surface—the stories from her childhood, the books she had read here and there over the years, the various insights into the dark side of human nature, the anthropological studies, every encounter that she had paid attention to with so much intensity. This novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, would recount the relationship of her parents, but it was really the distillation of all of her life’s work. It spilled out of her in a few intense months.
The novel was published the following year and became a great success. Over the next few years she wrote more novels at a furious pace. She soon became the most famous black writer of her time, and the first black female writer ever to make a living from her work.
Zora Neale Hurston’s story reveals in its barest form the reality of the Apprenticeship Phase—no one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you. If you desire an apprenticeship, if you want to learn and set yourself up for mastery, you have to do it yourself, and with great energy. When you enter this phase, you generally begin at the lowest position. Your access to knowledge and people is limited by your status. If you are not careful, you will accept this status and become defined by it, particularly if you come from a disadvantaged background. Instead, like Hurston, you must struggle against any limitations and continually work to expand your horizons. (In each learning situation you will submit to reality, but that reality does not mean you must stay in one place.) Reading books and materials that go beyond what is required is always a good starting point. Being exposed to ideas in the wide world, you will tend to develop a hunger for more and more knowledge; you will find it harder to remain satisfied in any narrow corner, which is precisely the point.
The people in your field, in your immediate circle, are like worlds unto themselves—their stories and viewpoints will naturally expand your horizons and build up your social skills. Mingle with as many different types of people as possible. Those circles will slowly widen. Any kind of outside schooling will add to the dynamic. Be relentless in your pursuit for expansion. Whenever you feel like you are settling into some circle, force yourself to shake things up and look for new challenges, as Hurston did when she left Howard for Harlem. With your mind expanding, you will redefine the limits of your apparent world. Soon, ideas and opportunities will come to you and your apprenticeship will naturally complete itself.
3. Revert to a feeling of inferiority
Attending high school in the late 1960s, Daniel Everett was a bit of a lost soul. He felt trapped in the California border town of Holtville, where he grew up, and totally disconnected to the local cowboy way of life. As narrated in chapter 1 (see here), Everett had always been drawn to the Mexican culture that existed among the migrant workers on the margins of the town. He loved their rituals and way of life, the sound o
f their language, and their songs. He seemed to have a knack for learning a foreign language and picked up Spanish rather quickly, gaining a bit of entrée into their world. To him, their culture represented a glimpse of a more interesting world beyond Holtville, but sometimes he despaired of ever really getting away from his hometown. He began to take drugs—for the time being, at least, they offered an escape.
Then, when he was seventeen, he met Keren Graham, a fellow student at his high school, and everything seemed to change. Keren had spent much of her childhood in northeastern Brazil, where her parents had served as Christian missionaries. He loved to hang out with her and listen to her stories of life in Brazil. He met her family and became a regular guest at their dinners. He admired their sense of purpose and dedication to their missionary work. A few months after meeting Keren he became a born-again Christian, and a year later they were married. Their goal was to start a family and become missionaries themselves.
Everett graduated from the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago with a degree in Foreign Missions, and in 1976 he and his wife enrolled in the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)—a Christian organization that instructs future missionaries in the necessary linguistic skills to translate the Bible into indigenous languages and spread the Gospel. After going through the course work, he and his family (which now included two children) were sent to SIL’s jungle camp in the region of Chiapas, in southern Mexico, to prepare them for the rigors of missionary life. For a month the family had to live in a village and learn as best they could the indigenous language, a Mayan dialect. Everett passed all of the tests with flying colors. Based on his success in the program, the faculty at SIL decided to offer him and his family the greatest challenge of them all—to live in a Pirahã village, deep in the heart of the Amazon.
The Pirahã are among the oldest inhabitants of the Amazon. When the Portuguese arrived in the area in the early eighteenth century, most of the tribes learned their language and adopted many of their ways, but the Pirahã resisted and retreated further into the jungle. They lived in deep isolation, with little contact with outsiders. By the time missionaries arrived in their villages in the 1950s, there were only some 350 Pirahã still alive, scattered in the area. The missionaries who tried to learn their language found it impossible. The Pirahã spoke no Portuguese, had no written language, and their words, to Westerners, all sounded alike. SIL had sent a couple in 1967 to learn the language and finally translate part of the Bible into Pirahã, but they could make little progress. After more than ten years of struggling with the language, they were driven half-mad by the task and wanted to leave. Hearing all of this, Everett was more than happy to accept the challenge. He and his wife were determined to be the first ones to crack the code of Pirahã.
He and his family arrived at a Pirahã village in December 1977. In his first few days there, Everett used all of the strategies he had been taught—for instance, holding up a stick and asking for their word for it, then dropping the stick and asking for the phrase to describe the action. In the months to come, he made good progress learning basic vocabulary. The method he had learned at SIL worked well, and he worked assiduously. Every time he heard a new word, he wrote it down on three-by-five note cards. He punched holes in the corners of the cards, carried dozens of them on the loop of his pants, and repeatedly practiced them with villagers. He tried to apply these words and phrases in different contexts, sometimes making the Pirahã laugh. Whenever he felt frustrated, he would look at the Pirahã children who picked up the language with ease. If they could learn it, so could he, he kept telling himself. But every time he felt like he was learning more phrases, he had the equal sensation that he was really getting nowhere. He began to understand the frustration of the couple that had preceded him.
For instance, he kept hearing a word over and over again that seemed to translate as “just now,” as in “the man had just now left.” But later, hearing it in a different context, he realized that it in fact referred to the precise moment when something appears or disappears—a person, a sound, anything. The phrase was really about the experience of such transitory moments, he decided, which seemed to resonate a lot with the Pirahã. “Just now” did not begin to cover the rich meanings of it. This started to happen with all kinds of words he thought he had understood. He also began to discover things that were missing in their language that went against all of the linguistic theories he had been taught. They had no words for numbers, no concept of right and left, no simple words that designated colors. What could this mean?
One day, after more than a year living there, he decided to accompany some Pirahã men deep into the jungle, and to his surprise he discovered a whole other side to their existence and language. They acted and spoke differently; they employed a different form of communication, talking to one another in elaborate whistles that clearly replaced spoken language, making them stealthier in their hunting forays. Their ability to navigate this dangerous environment was impressive.
Suddenly something became clear to Everett: his decision to confine himself to village life and simply to learn their language was the source of his problem. Their language could not be separated from their method of hunting, their culture, their daily habits. He had unconsciously internalized a sense of superiority to these people and their way of life—living among them like a scientist studying ants. His inability to pierce the secret of their language, however, revealed the inadequacies of his method. If he wanted to learn Pirahã as the children did, he would have to become like a child—dependent on these people for survival, participating in their daily activities, entering their social circles, feeling in fact inferior and in need of their support. (Losing any sense of superiority would later lead to a personal crisis, in which he would lose faith in his role as a missionary and leave the church for good.)
He began to enact this strategy on all levels, entering a realm of their lives that had been hidden to him. Soon all kinds of ideas about their strange language came to him. The linguistic oddities of Pirahã reflected the unique culture that they had evolved from living in isolation for so long. Participating in their lives as if he was one of their children, the language came alive from within, and he began to make the kind of progress in Pirahã that had eluded everyone else before him.
In his apprenticeship in the jungles of the Amazon that would later lead to his career as a groundbreaking linguist, Daniel Everett came upon a truth that has application far beyond his field of study. What prevents people from learning, even something as difficult as Pirahã, is not the subject itself—the human mind has limitless capabilities—but rather certain learning disabilities that tend to fester and grow in our minds as we get older. These include a sense of smugness and superiority whenever we encounter something alien to our ways, as well as rigid ideas about what is real or true, often indoctrinated in us by schooling or family. If we feel like we know something, our minds close off to other possibilities. We see reflections of the truth we have already assumed. Such feelings of superiority are often unconscious and stem from a fear of what is different or unknown. We are rarely aware of this, and often imagine ourselves to be paragons of impartiality.
Children are generally free of these handicaps. They are dependent upon adults for their survival and naturally feel inferior. This sense of inferiority gives them a hunger to learn. Through learning, they can bridge the gap and not feel so helpless. Their minds are completely open; they pay greater attention. This is why children can learn so quickly and so deeply. Unlike other animals, we humans retain what is known as neoteny—mental and physical traits of immaturity—well into our adult years. We have the remarkable capability of returning to a childlike spirit, especially in moments in which we must learn something. Well into our fifties and beyond, we can return to that sense of wonder and curiosity, reviving our youth and apprenticeships.
Understand: when you enter a new environment, your task is to learn and absorb as much as possible. For that purpose you must try to revert to
a childlike feeling of inferiority—the feeling that others know much more than you and that you are dependent upon them to learn and safely navigate your apprenticeship. You drop all of your preconceptions about an environment or field, any lingering feelings of smugness. You have no fears. You interact with people and participate in the culture as deeply as possible. You are full of curiosity. Assuming this sensation of inferiority, your mind will open up and you will have a hunger to learn. This position is of course only temporary. You are reverting to a feeling of dependence, so that within five to ten years you can learn enough to finally declare your independence and enter full adulthood.
4. Trust the process
Cesar Rodriguez’s father was a lifelong officer in the U.S. Army, but when Cesar (b. 1959) chose to attend the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, it was not because he was determined to follow in his father’s footsteps. He was probably heading toward a career in business. He decided, however, that he needed some discipline in life, and there was no more rigorous environment than the Citadel.
One morning in 1978, during his sophomore year, Rodriguez’s roommate told him that he was going to take the exams that the army, navy, and air force were offering for entrance into the aviation branches of their forces. Rodriguez decided to come along and take the exams just for the hell of it. To his surprise, a few days later he was notified that he had been accepted by the air force for their pilot training program. The initial training, to take place while he was still at the Citadel, meant taking flying lessons in a Cessna. Figuring that would be fun, he entered the program, not entirely sure how far he would take it. He passed the training exams rather easily. He enjoyed the mental challenge, the complete focus that flying required. Perhaps it would be interesting to take the next step. And so, after graduating from the Citadel in 1981, he was sent to the ten-month pilot instruction school at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma.
Mastery Page 11
