Give me a specialist
The woman I was helping with her kids for a minute has a Belgian Malinois puppy in the family, who joined just two days before I met them all. If there is an expert-level dog out there it’s a Mal, right?
Alarmed by the way the kids were interacting with this soon-to-be-meat-missile (as many Mal owners lovingly call their dogs), I asked the dog trainer I used with Maggie to great effect for some advice to pass along, at the mother’s blessing to do so.
And the father/husband who bought the puppy also found a trainer.
His trainer says almost exactly the opposite of mine.
Isn’t that interesting?
It makes me think about how my friend D has a kid who failed to thrive in a Montessori school in which EVERY OTHER KID was massively thriving.
And trying every parenting strategy in the world failed until he found the right one for his kid.
How much I appreciate a goddam narrow-viewpoint specialist zealot. Someone who is willing to put down an opinion so strongly that I know to go to them in order to receive more understanding about the way they think.
Is one of the dog trainers wrong?
When we laughed about the stark differences between the two, Mom and I agreed that you just pick someone to learn from, follow them for a while and see if it works.
You become served by being a bit of a zealot for a while, who views what the person says as the “right way” and acts as if it is so. And after a while you figure out what was good for you about that approach.
I often wonder about getting upset at people for the way they do things.
If you disagree, move on. Especially on the Internet. Notice, “huh, that’s interesting that’s how they think/do/act” and disregard it.
If they wanted to talk you’d probably know about it.
If you cared what they thought you’d probably seek to understand it whether via clarifying questions or from paying them to learn.
Simply jumping in to argue? Enjoy your wasted energy.
You could be peacefully looking for something that is for you.
I’ve enjoyed learning from specialists over the years. They would not have the degree of intimate understanding of their subject and way if they were not. Then the engineers jump in and bridge the gaps across chasms of narrow viewpoints, ID-ing the commonalities and weak spots. Which is why I can count on generally liking you if you’re an engineer.
Specialists can find their own little corners of the same field, as in the dog trainers example, and have wholly differing views. Amidst the complex relationships of life and quantum biology we should all expect to have a unique way things settle into us.
We take what works, figuring out what we mean when we say it’s working along the way, and let the rest grow where it wants.
Dive in with zealots but keep yourself clean. Notice why you believe things that they say and what you get from it. Maybe you could do that for yourself.