Who encouraged you? Who will you encourage?

Many people who work in a mostly solitary manner never pass on even a small portion of the things they’ve learned by hard experience. They’re not allowed to be teachers in formal settings. The teaching of things is considered a method. The priesthood of the method doesn’t like amateurs.

Of course the word amateur comes from the Latin word for love. You do it for love. Men like Wayne do it for the love of it, even though they are trying to make money at what they’re doing. They could probably make more, or at least work less and get a steadier income, by doing something else. Teaching school, for instance. He is showing others what he’s doing in the video, but he’s not running a school. It’s not the same thing. An apprentice is not a student.

The word love is thin gruel to describe the impetus for such work. Passion might be more like it. Fascination, perhaps. Compulsion and monomania, maybe. There are satisfactions available to a man that fully realizes his capacity to learn and do on his own terms. He looks only for an indication of that same urge in others as the entrance exam into his affairs. If no one shows up, he risks dying alone with his thoughts. Some men’s thoughts are good enough company on their own, though.

Wayne Henderson

(Thanks to Rob De Witt for sending that one along)