Do you truly want to be proficient?
I had this thought while browsing for hentai; I was looking for girls with big breasts, and I remembered this character, Erina Nakiri from Food Wars. I remembered her because she's very cute. Anyways, this is beside the point, the matter is that, after that I started thinking: what would it be like to date someone who is, for example, a professional chef? I went back to impressions I've heard of people, I remember girls and guys saying stuff like "I'd love to have someone who can cook for me", and I get that, I would also like that... but at the same time it would be a bit of a pain. Depending on their proficiency, it would ruin the act of eating shit food, I would always crave the food from my wife and I would find the garbage I eat right now disgusting by comparison.
Many of my thoughts come from random places, as you can see. Of course, this doesn't stop there. I started to think from the perspective of the chef, once one acquires such taste, such a level of proficiency they start to realize how mediocre everything else is. I cannot understand the mediocrity of it all because all of it is the same. But someone in a field, such as the culinary arts, pays more attention to their larger and robust frame of reference. In a sense, in the same way I wouldn't like to date a chef, I started to think "I wouldn't like to be a chef either..."
The problem with this idea is the conclusion, for proficiency is not only something related to cooking, you can be proficient in a plethora of things. But becoming proficient, as I've observed, means becoming aware of mediocrity. You'll understand how most things are average at best, nothing really reaching it's true heights. If there would be someone who is proficient in all things, then I'd imagine that person would be miserable. But can that be said only of proficiency?
It is somewhat easy to tell if something tastes like shit or not, but it's harder to categorize the better tasting thought. Can someone truly become a proficient "thinker"? Could that person become aware of the mediocrity of thoughts across society? Well, we can see it inversely; there is mediocrity of thought and therefore there must be proficiency of thought. Yet, it is evident that we cannot simply evaluate a thought and assign it a value or score... or can we?
If we are to eliminate the idea of objectivity then we can erase the ideal of an inherent good or bad food, the reason why we all can distinguish good and bad food has less to do with the food being good or bad and more to do with the fact that we share certain characteristics; brains, tongues, noses, culture, awareness. And now that objectivity is erased we can understand the way thought is valued, since it follows the same pattern, things in common across minds. It is possible to be largely aware of it, perhaps if someone is able to pinpoint their idea as the recurrence of a thought, then they'd be able to say that they are properly overthinking the matter proficiently.
The problem exist that, ultimately, we cannot be sure. We cannot define the ups and downs of the mind. But following the path of proficiency of the minds seems to bring awareness to the fact that proficiency itself is a thing, enough awareness as to create the previously mentioned effect; the revelation of mediocrity, in this case, a mediocrity that cannot be confirmed or defined. This may be due to the fact that the frame of reference can only exist within the self, since we cannot look inside other people's minds.
In the end, we may be evaluation devices that are prone to this type of behavior, contempt and acceptance are truly a virtue, and at times it is better to try and become proficient without awareness or intent. Being dumb about how dumb one is may make one a smart person in a world of contempt, and if we say that there is garbage food, it is only because we can.
As to how:
NO TO PRACTICE.
YES TO PRODUCTION.
Practice is what people who are not proficient need, it is a declaration of inability, and on itself exists a desire to become proficient. While to produce requires the necessary materials, it is the goal of the proficient to make something out of their proficiency. We are aiming to produce without practice, as the act of producing itself is practice, but we shall never produce to practice. Thus is this thought realized, I didn't think it thoroughly, yet it is here; thoroughly here. Half here, half not here, it is here.
These are the type of things I think, my thoughts don't have conclusions, they end abruptly and forget their origins, they are removed from the source that evoked them. This is what happens when I search for anime girls with big breasts; the world is slightly more doomed than before — and tomorrow I'll wake up as if nothing happened.