Thread: Leo's Daddy Learns to Hone (picture heavy)

I don't know if Louis Armstrong would have been a great guitar player. I don't know if you would have been better off getting just a yellow coticule rather than a combo stone. I don't know how much a particular stone contributes to one's eventual overall honing skills. I don't know what is "theoretically possible" in a honing progression.

But I do know how to take a dull blade and make it sharp.

As a psychiatrist, I have noted how many very intelligent people get victimized by their own brains. Because it is such a strong tool for them, they depend on it too much. They overthink things. They reason and conjecture and run "thought experiments" in their heads, which is all well and good -- up to a point. That point is reached, I think, when it interferes with decisive, effective action; when thinking takes the place of doing.

Watch a child at play. They enter games with their full selves -- body, spirit, will, imagination. They do not think: "Should I jump?" They just jump. And this play is the basis of all future successful activities. They discover their limits, their abilities, their purpose. And it is done not in the abstract, not in theory, but in the present, and with joy.

I think that is the best orientation to adopt when learning to hone.