Practiced People

Sometimes through a series of books or articles on a particular subject, you come away with a side note that is more interesting than the principle subject.  Several weeks ago from some research I was doing, the side note that grabbed my attention was  practiced people.  There are varieties of all kinds of people in life and throughout the different times and seasons I have met those who I would describe as a practiced person.  To be honest in different seasons of life, I have been a practiced person.  My first recollection is when I went to college.  I thought I will just take these positives from others I know and incorporate them and everyone will think I am the funniest, wittiest person they've met.  Ha!  Guess I didn't practice enough.  From tennis days, I had a friend  who I would definitely call practiced.  She absorbed traits and styles from others, practiced them until they became a definite part of her personality.  I don't think anyone ever knew her as a real person.  Her handwriting was a practiced art from childhood, from a friend in the 5th grade whose styling of letters were copied perfectly.  She once showed me the original writing and her growing practiced letters which eventually became as exact as the original.  She was the goddaughter of a rich and famous Houstonian and in a pinch she and her husband would be called in to replace invited socialites who for some reason couldn't attend.   Now, they weren't poor by any means and  they're very affluent in their own right, but at these events she'd pick up gestures or styles and practice them until they became her very own.  Honestly, we all do this to a certain point, but she did not like anything original to her, at all and she spent her life being a practiced person in the arts, as a hostess, her gestures, and what she served at meals.  She wiped out her past of where she was born and how she had grown up in her stories. Her life became the narrative that she desired it to be.  She truly is one of the most practiced people I have ever met.  She is probably the best practiced person ever since her life revolved around constant practice.

There are all levels of practiced people and practiced people come in all forms and varieties.  I'm not talking about people who are practicing good manners, practicing politeness or practicing dance steps or lines for a play.  We could all use a little more of that type of practicing.  The Andy Griffith show had an episode where a man comes to town and he knows everything about everybody and he knows the map of the city as well as his own name.  People are put off by him and want Andy to run him out of town.  Finally, Andy gets to the bottom of it and this man had served in the military with a citizen of Mayberry who talked so highly of his hometown, that this stranger to the city read the Mayberry newspaper before arriving and thus the people themselves had been the source of his knowledge of the town.   He just wanted to be able to say, Mayberry, my home town.  The way he went about it, the presentation, is what made everyone apprehensive. 

Book plots and movies are plentiful in presenting those who practice being someone else literally or those who think their success in life comes at the behest of a well practiced life.  The look on their face, they way they stand or enter a room.  What they wear.  The chastisement to those who aren't walking in a practiced tone of life abounds.  There are clues that are almost too visible to those whose lives are consumed with practicing to be someone besides themselves that an alert observer will see.

The times I have found myself being a practiced person happened when I was in the tennis world and many times when I am in church world or ladies who lunch world and a few times at Biltmore world, although rarely do I act as a practiced person there anymore.  I'd rather watch the practiced people rather than being one.  Oh yes, my very favorite one that I really don't have to do anymore was when being Mrs. Monarch, not Nancy in business situations.  Thankfully, I am Nancy, now the most I have ever been in life.


I don't know if we can practice enough to be a totally practiced person.  Maybe being a rehearsed person is within the range of possibility.  In the moments that can't be controlled, ambushes or surprises, many times the practiced life vanishes and the original default part of a person is revealed.

I am not referring to biblical practice like Paul writes about in Philippians 4

26. Philippians 4:9
    
    • New International Version
      Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
      Philippians 4:8-10 (in Context) Philippians 4 (Whole Chapter)
    • New Living Translation
      Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.
      Philippians 4:8-10 (in Context) Philippians 4 (Whole Chapter)
    • Amplified Bible
      Practice what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and model your way of living on it, and the God of peace (of untroubled, undisturbed well-being) will be with you.
      Philippians 4:8-10 (in Context) Philippians 4 (Whole Chapter)

No I'm pondering and thinking on those who practice being someone else.  Just observations from a piece I have been working on this year.