Essays

Thomas Erickson
August 2023

I am free.

I have spent a week at a the Hawaiian International  Conference on System Science. I ran a half-day workshop, and then a full day session in which twelve people presented papers. I welcomed people, introduced the session, introduced each talk, held up time cards as time ran out, shot meaningful looks at people who did not appear to be heeding the “stop” time card, and, should the audience sit mute at the end of the talk, asked the first question. As an introvert, I find all this quite exhausting.

Thomas Erickson
July 2023

For the first fifty years of my life I cultivated my mind.

I was raised to believe that learning was the path to having a good life. Learn to read. Do well in school. Develop social skills. Get into a good college. Find a profession where your interests and abilities overlap. Be curious; seek out new things; keep learning. And, as a consequence, advance along the career path: develop more expertise, accrue experiences, develop your work portfolio, expand your network of contacts. My body had little to do with any of this. Well, that’s not true. It is more accurate to say that it played a supporting role: possibly important, but by no means in the spotlight. I didn’t pay much attention to it. Yet I was not a sedentary person: I biked, to school and then later to work. I practiced a martial art. I hiked and backpacked and body-surfed. I kept a garden. And so on. Much of what I did for fun involved physical activity. But still, I took my body for granted.

Thomas Erickson
June 2023

I have spent the last six years learning piano.

I started late, just after I turned 61. I was starting almost from scratch – I knew the treble clef, and quarter and half and whole notes, but that’s about it. They say that one learns things – especially things like language and music and dancing – better before puberty. That may be so.

But what I lack in timing, I make up in other ways. Studies in the psychology of expertise tell us that practice swamps talent. Studies of students at piano conservatories find that the best predictor of how well students do – whether they go one to become piano teachers, concert pianists, or world-renowned performers – is simply how much they practice. The idea of someone with talent to whom music comes naturally… well, that may be true for a few months during childhood, but in the long run it is practice, practice, practice. Perhaps it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: tell someone they’re talented, and they feel motivated to practice more. But although I lack talent for music, I have an equally useful talent: persistence.

Thomas Erickson
April 2023

I am cleaning out the closet in the mudroom. Things accumulate here: it is an ideal place to tuck things as we depart in a rush, or return in a wave of fatigue. Once tucked, however, they are apt to be forgotten in the dark, still space of the closet. Gradually, the well-ordered space is engulfed by an alluvial fan of detritus washed up by the wakes of our passage. Tucks become tosses, the angle of repose is approached, and soon thereafter I am forced into action.