Mastery.

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From several dreams, some notions, a few questions, a conversation or two, the notion of becoming a master has been taxing my quiet and conversive mind.  What is mastery.  What are the purposes for it.  What are the limits.  Who really knows.  The best I have been able to do is consider a proposition, do my best with it, move on, and perhaps over time return to it.  As with paint, regardless of whether the color is appreciated or correct for the project, correctness may or may not follow.  But the hue will become more sure with each layer.

There are the obvious reasons to attain mastery, and increase that mastery.  The purely functional level is what most immediately recognize.  To master basket ball or home repair is to find utility and perhaps economy.  To know of history, intimately and as correctly as possible, is to find an audience who appreciates someone who can stitch a form of reason, or nature perhaps more truly, to ourselves as groups, nations, religions, or such.  Each mastery comes with a cost and a benefit.  Mere survival, in some cases.  While I say "mere", the truth is, as humble as that may seem to those in ivory towers, surviving is often better than the option, even in a purely utilitarian manner.  It doesn't stop there, of course.  Mastery has some clear and simple reasoning.  It also has more.

As I am learning to live again, I am finding that mastery of some simple domestic chores, such as cooking, has more to it than pure utility.  As I master this art, in various forms, I find that beyond simply being able to repeat a course, or complete meal, so that one meal is as another, and all such meals are more than just functional, but pleasurable, I see that there is still more.  As I learn to cook a particular food, I also learn how to clean up while I work, how to shop for that meal, and how to do other things that make the whole process much more efficient.  This helps no one but me, even if I happen to feed an army with the meal.  There is a satisfaction, beyond the meal, of being competent, clean, neat, and time sensitive.

So it goes with many things.  None can be an island.  Even should I learn to cook, clean, prep, and shop, so that a meal is accurate, precise, timely, leaving a clean kitchen, I must depend upon my grocer, the butcher, and a host of others for short or long term needs and wants to fulfill my mastery.  Oh, no real point, just counting mental pennies as my day comes to a close.  Thinking, or writing what I think, out loud.  Psychic doodling.  It is what I have on such a day.  Good night.