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Thursday, June 9. 2022

I am fortunate to know many people with more life competencies that I have. I envy them. I am not talking about talent and talent stacks, but just competencies. Building a stone wall takes competency: Michelangelo had talent.

Here's a beginning ist of life competencies that I see in people, and admire. Trigger Warning: These might be white male competencies:

- Gracious and graceful social amiability
- Ability to follow the math and statistics
- Ability to handle one's finances reasonably
- Ability to handle boats
- Ability to handle firearms on the range and in the field
- Knowing how to manage gardens of all sorts
- How to cook decent meals
- How to handle a cranky horse
- How to camp in the wilderness
- How to keep playing some sport into adulthood
- How to handle a chain saw
- How to do simple carpentry, and how to paint a house
- How to start a fire with wet wood
- How to write an essay
- How to put out a kitchen fire
- How to do CPR
- How to use a GPS in the woods - and a compass to navigate
- How to drive a stick shift vehicle - sports car or tractor
- How to catch fish
- How to ride a bike and motorbike
- How to play some instrument, even if poorly

Add your own life competencies, or desired competencies, below.

Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 15:16 | Comments (21) | Trackbacks (0)

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Good list. I would add:
repair/patch clothing
make a family meal for a couple of dollars
give first aid for wounds/trauma
tie/secure a load with rope
start a car that won't start
talk to/help a drunk or someone with mental illness
grow and can/preserve their own food
give advice (especially to someone who badly needs it but doesn't want it)
Make a good pasta sauce
Throw a punch and take a punch
Win a fight and avoid a fight
Spend an unexpected night or two in the woods with just the clothes on your back
talk to a child/help a child

#1 OneGuy on 2022-06-09 16:34 (Reply)

Change a flat tire
Jump start a vehicle
Use an axe
Filet a fish
Recite the Pledge of Allegiance
Throw and catch a baseball
Explain icing (hockey)
Tie multiple knots
Drive in snow
Go to the opera with your wife (at least once)
Teach you son or daughter to drive a stick
Fix a faucet
Install a ceiling fan
Wire switches and outlets
Lay tile
Back up a trailer
Identify planets, stars, and constellations in the night sky.

#2 rocdoctom on 2022-06-09 18:12 (Reply)

[blockquote] - How to play some instrument, even if poorly[/blockquote]

If you have $100 and 15 minutes a day you can learn to play guitar. I’m in my 40s and have made it a point to dedicate two hours a day towards self improvement. I practice guitar for 15-20 minutes then hit the gym. Been doing this since 2021.

I’m still pretty bad at guitar, but a whole lot better than I was last year.

#3 egd on 2022-06-09 20:36 (Reply)

debug your computer
diagnose illnesses (helps when going to doc)
teach kids to read
understand the stock market & annuities
fly a kite (one I never learned but kids love if you can do it)
do minor plumbing
tell a funny story well
explain something practical to someone

#4 cc (Link) on 2022-06-09 20:54 (Reply)

- change all the fluids, tune up and perform routine maintenance on your vehicles.

- sharpen knives competently.

- learn to drive at least one kind of heavy equipment.

- be able to weld repair tools and implements.

- be able to replace a wooden handle on a hand tool

- learn to make stupid lists.

#5 Aggie on 2022-06-09 23:38 (Reply)

All of the above and to know how to secure a load and tie a bowline knot that can be used for double purchase in a pinch with a couple of half hitches.

How to sew up a blown out mainsail. Next time, you do it with dental floss. Oh and next time on a really scary night, you go to the bow, grab the jib with all your might because you're being blown onto a lea shore a couple hundred yards away and reconnect the jib hanks for the sheets since you're going to need it on account of no mainsail.

#6 Curtis on 2022-06-10 01:38 (Reply)

Introduce people
Speak to a small audience
Teach a simple concept or lesson
Replace a broken pane of glass
Re-light a pilot light
Mix cement in a wheelbarrow
Maintain and safely clean a lawnmower
Patch a flat bicycle tire tube
Apply a finish to wood
Field dress small game

#7 Michael (Link) on 2022-06-10 06:21 (Reply)

- How to put out a kitchen fire

I knew how, but it took some darn quick thinking to remember that opened box of baking soda hiding in the fridge. One big dash of soda, and no more fire. Now I keep a small container of soda next to the stove.

Go to the opera with your wife (at least once)

Passion! Betrayal! Murder! what's not to like about opera? But I prefer musical theater.

QUOTE:

What do you go for,
Go see a show for?
Tell the truth
You go to see those beautiful dames --"Dames" from 42nd Street

#8 Mike Anderson (Link) on 2022-06-10 06:33 (Reply)

Great lists. I will add:
Butchering your own animals example, hogs, steer, chicken.
Hunting and cleaning and eating wild game
Farm skills, in general

#9 Vince Frodl on 2022-06-10 06:53 (Reply)

Fly an airplane.

#10 snopercod on 2022-06-10 07:30 (Reply)

Things I can't do, but some handy friends or neighbors can:

Spinning and weaving
Caning
Welding
Thoroughly overhaul an old tractor engine

I can paint just about anything, from a painted-lady house to a decorative sign or geegaw. I can also glaze a window, but down here, at least, there are almost no more windows that need it.

It's a great pleasure, and handy, to be able to make up a harmony and sing it without getting mixed up by other people's parts. Even if you're stuck without instruments a group of people can entertain themselves with vocal music.

Late in life I've finally learned to bake a good loaf of bread. A neighbor has got a very suitable batch of sourdough starter started from the air. Wildly cheap and 100x better than anything we can buy locally.

You can do amazing baking with a dutch oven in an ordinary campfire.

It's good to get used to attending a dying loved one in the final days and hours. It will never again be as scary as the first time.

#11 Texan99 on 2022-06-10 08:52 (Reply)

Robert Heinlein's list (from Stranger in a Strange Land):

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.-Robert A. Heinlein

#12 Karen Myers (Link) on 2022-06-10 09:01 (Reply)

Heinlein sapiens

#12.1 JD850 on 2022-06-10 09:37 (Reply)

No, it's from "Time Enough for Love", and is also excerpted along with the other pithy comments in "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long".

#12.2 Blackwing1 on 2022-06-10 23:12 (Reply)

Knit a sweater
Refinish/reupholster furniture
Teach patty cake to a baby
Juggle a marriage, a full-time job, an educational pursuit, and children all at once
Use a sewing machine
Make your mother-in-law laugh at a joke
Make your own curtains
Be calm and comforting while your mother dies in front of you

#13 RebeccaH on 2022-06-10 09:05 (Reply)

When my father was dying I would go visit him at the hospital. Except for the last time he always made me feel better leaving than when I had arrived. Maintaining a sense of humor in the face of one's own mortality would be high on my list. I'm not sure if I have that skill or not.

#14 Robert Moffett (Link) on 2022-06-10 09:52 (Reply)

Mike covered mine: public speaking.

If you can breezily conduct public meetings and deliver informative speeches in front of audiences, then you've got my admiration.

#15 steveaz on 2022-06-10 10:29 (Reply)

Catch and clean a fish.

Balance a wobbly ceiling fan.

Take a hint.

#16 Matt on 2022-06-10 12:28 (Reply)

Fly a glider
Fly an airplane
Fly inverted
Land in a farmer's field if required

#17 Ray Van Dune on 2022-06-10 12:52 (Reply)

Going by what he taught us, my Dad's list of things he wanted us to be competent at included:

-Change a tire
-Park a car skillfully (with our learners' permits, we all got a ceremonial ruler, to be kept on the dashboard. Every time we parked we had to get out and measure from the bumper to whatever object we'd pulled up to)
-Haggle (yard sales and flea markets are great places to learn)
-Navigate using cardinal directions, and give clear directions to others.
-Handle small boats (we had, at any given time, a collection of kayaks, canoes, and tiny open sailboats-- he probably would have gone for larger sailboats if he'd been able to afford them!)
-Interpret jewelers' marks
-Cross a busy four-lane road on foot, without a crosswalk.
-Read danger signals and know when it's time to leave
-Exit quietly when necessary
-Talk to strangers
-Talk without volunteering information
-Play cards
-Mental arithmetic
-Read aloud so that other people want to listen

#18 Churchmouse on 2022-06-10 13:07 (Reply)

Be able to dance some basic ballroom steps in several dances with any woman, your wife or not, whether she is skilled or not and whether she is short or tall, skinny or fat, introverted or not.

#19 Fred Z on 2022-06-10 18:19 (Reply)

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Thursday, June 9. 2022

Competencies