On Wonder

[Reader note: This song randomly came on while I was writing, and I think it's a pretty apt tune for this post. So if you'd like the full multimedia readership experience, listen as you read.]

When I first moved to San Francisco, I was literally entranced. I'd be jogging at night, or meandering around neighborhoods on a Saturday afternoon, and I'd say to myself: "I can't believe this place actually exists." It was like some writer had taken all of the ingredients of a perfect town - beauty, friendliness, affluence, an accepting culture - and literally wrote it into reality.

When I would visit Chicago, or Minneapolis, or Ann Arbor, people would ask me what I thought of the west coast, and I'd whip out my shit-eating grin and brag about how I lived in the greatest city on Earth. I knew I was coming off like a smug little prick, but I didn't care. I felt awed, and at home, for the first time in a long while.

Unfortunately, as I've noticed with elevating unease, the feeling didn't last. As with many things that change slowly in our personalities and attitudes, I only discovered this in retrospect. It's getting close to two years since the cross-country move, and a significant portion of my earlier wonder has eroded away.

Granted, I expected this. It's a common pattern that I've witnessed in life (mine, at least). You enter a new environment (a new job, perhaps, or the start of college) with gobs of both excitement and inexperience. As time goes on and experience rises, the sense of wonder begins its inevitable dissipation.

I imagine this is why people tend to bounce around hobbies or vocations, riding an initial wave of excitement just long enough for the sense of newness to run its course. As experience rises, the effort still needs to be spent, but we don't have a reserve supply of wonder & earnestness to propel us through the tough spots. This could apply to living in a major city - we still have to wake up every morning and live our lives, despite greater disenchantment with city life over time - or to mastering a skill like playing the guitar. It sounds sexy and exciting at first, but once we open our eyes to how many hours it takes to become a rock star, vigor evaporates, but the unlearned chords remain.

So how to do fight this pattern? Do we even want to?

Since this is a blog, and I'm basically just talking to myself here, I'll propose a solution to my own question. If everybody who developed a skill or became ingrained in a community faced the kind of perpetual malaise that I described above, then nobody would stick with anything long enough to get good at it. There must be something that replaces the euphoria of inexperienced wonder. That thing is competence, or expertise.

If you stick with something long enough, interesting things start to happen. For one, you actually get good at it. You pick up nuances that are imperceptible to outsiders. You stop making rookie mistakes. You realize that you're part of a community of like-minded people. You gain some confidence that, hey, I know a thing or two about this.

With that comes the satisfaction of someone who's survived apprenticeship. And when that happens, some of the wonder comes back. It's not the same as it was in the beginning, but it's a little more sincere and a little less naive. It's like the entertainer who enters the industry dazzled by the challenge and spectacle of it all, conquers disillusionment, and one day assumes the deep fulfillment of a veteran.

So, yeah: maybe I'm no longer awestruck during my twilight jogs through Pacific Heights. And maybe I've stopped calling my parents every few days to relay some city-life minutia like a freshman who can't believe he's actually going to a real-live frat party. But at least I'm starting to get it. And like anything we want to improve at - playing a sport, building a profession, or becoming a better husband - that comes with its own satisfaction.