A lot with a little

Every time I see my daughter painting, it reminds me of being a kid and watching my dad with a brush in hand and a stretched canvas leant against the wall. I don't know why, but he never really seemed to use any of his easels, nor did he use a proper palette, and instead would use old ice cream container lids. He was a "cheap" painter, despite being incredibly talented.

It is interesting when it comes to equipment in this regard, as for example, I know people who every time they start a new hobby, they go out and buy the best they possibly can. Inevitably, six months later they put it away in their garage and it is not seen again until they dig it out during a spring clean a decade later, and donate it to charity.

Having the right or best equipment, doesn't mean having the skills that can utilize them to their full potential and sometimes I wonder if it is actually a hinderance to improving skill. Perhaps having the "best" at the beginning of the learning curve could be a demotivating factor when it comes to the normal progression of skill, where even though I have the best, I am still not as good as I want to be. Maybe having lesser equipment overcomes this hurdle a little, where a person feels that they could be better, with better equipment and will stick with skill development longer until they are ready to buy it. Both paths might improve at the same rate, but the mindset and framing is quite different.

I remember when I started playing field hockey in the front yard, I used a stick that my older brother had used a decade earlier. At this point, I had never even seen a game of hockey, let alone knew what equipment was necessary, and spent my time hitting a tennis ball against some concrete steps, stopping the ball with the stick and hitting it again - as kids do.

I was about seven years of age and decided to try out for the school team, turning up to the practice with my brother's worn, grey stick and then noticed - other people's sticks looked different, but didn't think much of it. I ran some drills, hit some balls and was having some fun - until the coach came up to me and asked if I wanted to try a different stick. In the decade between when my brother played and myself, the style of the hook of the stick had changed dramatically and after a couple mishits, with this new stick in my hand I could pummel that ball and after playing only with a tennis ball earlier, taking the hard ball that barely bounced onto the stick was simple. I went on to play for a few years and did pretty well.

But I wonder, if I had started with the "proper" equipment, would I have learned the same skills and would I have had an edge over anyone else on that field, or is it because of the "poor" equipment that I was able to learn skills others didn't hold, as my body was forced to be more creative. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, but that isn't limited to innovating technology, it applies to innovating skills too. Using a tennis ball and needing to stop it on the stick face for example, forced my body to adjust itself and become far softer and flexible when taking the ball from a feed, meaning that the action was smoother and interestingly when playing later, gave me more room to play the ball, opening more options to feed it on faster and with more consistency.

It would be interesting to be able to get a big data view of the situation and see the progression of world-class professionals across their fields, cross-referenced with the equipment they used to get there. Would it be that those at the top as adults had the best as children? It is hard to say, but my intuition suspects that many of them likely had to overcome a wide variety of challenges in order to be at the top of their game as adults. Of course, there is a survivor bias at that point too and it likely is sport dependent, but I wonder how many of the top football stars in the world, came from a life of privilege.

Opportunity comes in many forms and while we often focus on what we don't have and how that holds us back, I do think that having these many life challenges in our way, provides an opportunity to face and overcome them, proving to ourselves that despite less than ideal conditions, we have what it takes. I believe that at a general level, the people who see themselves as survivors of experience rather than victims of it, tend to do better in their lives. And while these challenges are on a spectrum, we don't have to be at the extremes to feel empowered or oppressed - depending on how we ourselves frame our experience.

We want the best for our children, but it is impossible to guarantee the best outcomes, so the best for them is building the mindset where they are able to make the best out of the situation, whatever that means in the moment. I don't know what this means at a practical level in terms of teaching children, but providing the opportunity of the best equipment and the best teachers, might limit the possibility of those situations where a child can learn to overcome less than the best and prove to themselves that despite less than ideal, they can still improve and conquer conditions, or learn that failure, is not that bad.