"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
--Theodore Roosevelt
"The worst sort of critics are butterfly collectors - they chase something, ostensibly out of their search for beauty, then, once they get close, they catch that beautiful something, they kill it, they stick a pin through its abdomen, dissect it and label it. The whole process, I find, is not a happy or healthy one. Someone with his or her own shit figured out, without any emotional problems or bitterness or envy, instead of killing that which he loves, will simply let the goddamn butterfly fly, and instead of capturing and killing it and sticking it in a box, will simply point to it - "Hey everyone, look at that beautiful thing" - hoping everyone else will see the beautiful thing he has seen."
--Dave Eggars
I've started my second language acquisition research and as I examine the reams of data to which I now have access--numbers and words that represent months and months of gritted teeth, loneliness, tears, and Arabic--I realize I don't want to become that kind of critic. I have nothing but admiration for those who so painfully expose themselves in order to learn, who wake up and try again even when all seems lost, when progression becomes the unobtainable attestation of some naive idealist. I hope one day to count myself among them, to have other research girls transcribe my interviews and examine my journal entries, meticulously tracking my slow but steady progress and holding rulers to my results.
See?
see?
the butterfly?
No comments:
Post a Comment