An Unapologetic Dilettante

Expertise is overrated. Little sips of knowledge are a wonderful thing.

I should know. I’ve been a proud dilettante for over half a century. While my interests range from everything by Dickens to the popular culture of the 1960s, I’ve learned just enough about these and other topics to satisfy my infinitesimal attention span and moved on.

Rosalind Russell
as Auntie Mame

One of my muses, the semi-fictional Auntie Mame, famously proclaimed that “Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.”

Mame was a devoted dilettante who dabbled in a little bit of this and a little bit of that, from stage acting to Montessori education to the problems of labor in India. I love Rosalind Russell as Mame. You know she will never grow tedious in the way people who know a lot always seem to. There are too many delectable dishes in life’s vast banquet to gorge on just one.

I closed out last year by immersing myself in Stephen Sondheim's world. I realized I could easily devote the rest of my life to further exploration. I will continue to dip into Sondheim, but ever aware of the danger of becoming pedantic.

Even TED Talks, which seem custom-made for people like me, make me restless. The short ones are fine, but I’ve passed on the ones that take 20 minutes to watch. There are just too many other topics under the sun.

The Greek Philosopher
Epictetus

There is a fine line between undiagnosed ADD and my dilettantism. Two years ago, I only got 3 weeks into a 52-week handbook for learning about ancient Greek stoicism. I thought stoicism was cool, but I couldn’t stick with Epictetus and his crew. Fortunately, I adopted a stoic attitude about abandoning my stoicism and moved on.

Even when I worked, I steadfastly avoided becoming an expert in my field. In retrospect, I dropped out of my PhD program in English literature because—hell, who cares? Who wants to get a PhD in anything?

This blog offers the perfect vehicle for someone with many interests and a short attention span. While it would be nice to write a book, that takes discipline, patience, and mastery.

I leave you with this question: Who would you rather sit next to at a dinner party – someone like me, with the attention span of a gnat, or some boring expert who drones on and on about the Civil War or economics? You might learn something from the expert, but I guarantee you, my table is having more fun.