A Definition Of Mastery
2026-06-22
Christianity is full of seeming contradictions. Joy through suffering, receiving through giving, gaining through losing, and more. Among them is freedom through servitude. St. Augustine focuses on this issue while writing of his conversion1, when he discusses how the will must be unified in one purpose to find freedom. After the story of his conversion, he writes: "By your gift I had come totally not to will what I willed but to will what You willed."
I have a similar contradiction to bring up about the concept of mastery. Mastery requires a similar servitude towards what you are mastering. Without this submission, you cannot progress. For example, I have taken up the art of cardistry as a hobby. The further along I get in practicing, the more it feels like I can make the cards do whatever I want them to. That feeling is a lie which comes from my bias toward my own perspective. From any external standpoint, I have only explored the possibilities of what the cards could already do. I cannot expand the possibilities of cardistry as an art, as if the cards' reality somehow bent around my will. This becomes most obvious if I were to attempt to do something impossible with the cards. They would of course never do it, and this lack of knowledge is a lack of mastery on my part. Furthermore, if I imagine the cards cannot do something they can do, then my mastery in cardistry is not complete.
Mastery therefore must be defined as follows: as a subjection to the restrictions of an object. A pillow, being a soft fabric object, cannot be used to cut a steak except with great effort2. A knife, being a sharp metal object, would make an awful rest for your head3.
Let us take a short literary detour to further explore this definition. You may be familiar with the following passage from the Fellowship of the Ring:
Frodo looked at her questioningly. ‘He is, as you have seen him,’ she said in answer to his look. ‘He is the Master of wood, water, and hill.’ ‘Then all this strange land belongs to him?’ ‘No indeed!’ she answered, and her smile faded. ‘That would indeed be a burden,’ she added in a low voice, as if to herself. ‘The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master. No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hill-tops under light and shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.’
I first interested myself in the topic of mastery when I read the passage above. Tolkien implies the textbook definition does not fully define this word. Sure enough, Merriam Webster reports that mastery is "possession or display of great skill or technique". It is a useful definition, but lacks in richness. The other definition, the "dominion of a master" is closer to what I intend to put forth but still lacks in the same way. It does not describe anything about my internal experience of mastery, only the external appearance of it.
Tom Bombadil has the appearance of possessing mastery because of his skill. Yet, his mastery actually springs from his inner knowledge of how to treat the land. No one will ever catch him, because he understands how the earth beneath him works. The question of ownership is entirely separate4. In the same way, we should not look to have ownership of our skills but instead master them by understanding the rules of the skill.
A small trouble lurks in that definition. When I say "rules", the most common mental image is a "No Trespassing" sign, or a document like the Constitution. That image proves to be too limited of an intuition for my purposes. Written rules do not express all that can be known about how to treat something. They're usually correct, and you will have been better for following them. But the sign is usually also there because of something. At some point, there was a lived experience much richer than the written word, and by obeying or disobeying the rule (or watching others do so) you discover the lived experience5. "Don't play with fire" seems to take on a whole new meaning after you've burned your hand. It is only by fully obeying these unspoken, living-knowledge rules that we approach mastery. This obedience also takes the name of wisdom.
To master a craft, one must first ask themselves what its rules are. I now turn to my own field of software engineering for an example. One such rule is that computers are discrete machines. It would be absurd to attempt to use one for perfectly modeling human relationships. Knowing this, I can model the code around a helpful approximation which solves a smaller problem. To do so would be to exercise my mastery, because I approach the limit of what the computer can accomplish while avoiding the border created by its rules. To shrink away from the limit entirely would be wrong. To cross the border, fail at the task, and proceed without recognizing my failure would be worse. If I do recognize the issue early enough, I can learn without inflicting the product of such an ill-fated attempt upon others.
Unfortunately for us, that perspective only comes with experience. Often, it has to be others' experiences that are related to us which cause us to build our mastery and leave our fruitless endeavors. As I related earlier with cardistry, my own perspective biases my ability to master something. If I think I've accomplished all there is in a skill before I've truly reached its borders, then I will not have mastery (except perhaps over a subset of that skill). A friend can break me out of my perspective, in this case by showing me a new card manipulation which I'd never considered before. The true master has many advisors, and he searches out those who know the unspoken rules.
I would like to point out here that mastery comes fastest through the working out of humility. Advisors are one cure to a rigid perspective, true self-forgetfulness is another. Since we shall not have the latter perfected on earth, both are required. Humility also appears in the definition of mastery itself. In order to subject yourself to an object's reality, it can require a great deal of humility.
Mastery is therefore twofold. By requiring humility, mastery becomes about discovering the limits of what you are mastering. When you inevitably misjudge those limits, adjust your knowledge of the rules, and grow in wisdom by not repeating your mistakes.