This story originally appeared on the Gents Cafe Newsletter. You can subscribe here.
My hands were shaking. Not gently, properly, visibly shaking.
I was standing on a small stage in a New York bar, guitar in hand, a band behind me, and an audience in front of me.
I was in my thirties. A few months earlier, I had picked up the guitar, after abandoning it in my teens. Thanks to a patient teacher, here I was, terrified and alive in equal measure, about to play in front of strangers.
That night on stage, I was not particularly good. But I was there.
Nobody in that room knew what it had taken to get there. But I did.
And that, was the whole point.
We’ve absorbed a story about competence, that a man should do things well, or not at all. That to be seen struggling, or visibly working something out, is a kind of exposure best avoided.
That story is worth interrogating. Because it’s costing us something.
You’ll likely know the phrase. “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” It gets deployed with a knowing look, a shorthand for the unfocused man, the one who couldn’t commit.
This is only half the original quote. In full, it reads: “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
We’ve been citing the criticism and suppressing the compliment.
The quote was always an argument for range. We just forgot to finish reading it.
The willingness to begin again is not a sign of a man still finding himself. It is the sign of a man who knows exactly who he is. He doesn’t need to protect his image by only doing what he already knows he can do well.
That man is building something. Character, confidence and new skills.
The man who has started from scratch more than once develops something the pure specialist rarely does. He understands how learning works from the inside. Deep expertise, for all its value, can calcify into rigidity. Range keeps you supple.
When you’re used to being competent, even accomplished, sitting down to do something new requires an honest reckoning with the bruised ego of being a beginner.
It isn’t easy. Ego tells you to quit, however the discomfort is worth seeking out rather than avoiding.
Recently, in my forties, I picked up a printmaking gouge for the first time. I had no idea what I was doing. The block slipped. The cut went the wrong way. What emerged bore only a passing resemblance to what I’d intended. I looked at it for a long moment, and then, to my own mild surprise, I felt something close to delight.
Not because I made something good. It wasn’t. But because it was mine, and I had made it.
The best men I’ve known were genuinely interested in everything, not experts, but curious. They asked questions. They tried things. They weren’t precious about being seen not-knowing.
Stay curious. Pick something. Anything. Sit with the discomfort of being new at it.
That, as much as any tailored jacket or considered opinion, is what makes a man worth knowing.
