A Mason's Work

This is the cornerstone episode of the podcast and the fundamental underpinning of this episode

is that while we meet on the level, we are not all operating at the same level.

This becomes outrageously important when you consider the conversations you're having

with the brethren in your lodge or the brethren online.

You have knowledge that has been essentially grown based on your life experience.

That development of knowledge, what you have right now represents the pinnacle of your

experience.

Knowing that other people have different experiences, they may know more than you.

Ideally, you want that to be the case.

They may know more than you in places where you think you're already good.

They may know more than you in places where you have no knowledge.

You may know more than someone else.

As we communicate with each other, the levels of development that we interact at will almost

never be the same.

You will always be at some level of differential between yourself and the person you are speaking

with.

If you are in a higher order of magnitude or higher order of development for a lack of

a point where it's said, you have a responsibility to help elevate their level of development.

If you are a lower level of development than they are, you want to be able to identify

that as quickly as possible and then try and learn as much as you can.

This is how we essentially unlock the experience multiplier in the video game of life.

We want to get to the next level faster.

We want to become more capable and more agentic as individuals, more capable change agents.

In order to do that, being able to identify when someone knows more than you or knows less

than you and how to respond appropriately becomes vitally important.

This is very much related to the perspectives that we talk about with putting on your

enter apprentice, your fellow craft, or your master Mason's apron, and how do you respond

to them? You'll be able to wear all the three of them at any given moment for any different

reason. When you are in these situations, though, you want to always take the opportunity

to take those differentials and shrink them.

It doesn't make sense for you as an individual to never share what you know.

You'll never grow that way. You'll never bring anyone with you and it's a lonely, lonely

life where Mason's were designed to work with others.

With folks that know more than you, it is never productive to be resentful that they

know more than you. It is always productive to be curious, to learn more, to try and figure

out what they know and how you might benefit from that knowledge, either in acquiring it

or in spreading it, not in opportunistically exploiting it just as an FYI.

When we look at these things, how do you know someone knows more than you? It's easy to

know when someone knows less than you in general because you can kind of suss that out if you're

really developed in music and they don't seem to understand any of the core concepts that's easy.

But when somebody knows more than you, it's a little bit tricky.

There are some indicators that someone knows more to you and they start with things like the vocabulary.

When someone uses vocabulary, you don't understand about a given subject. It becomes

vitally important right away if you don't understand a word, ask what that word is or what it means.

More often than not, it's going to be an acronym, but if it's not, again,

adopting, putting on your curiosity hat and trying to find out more is going to help you determine

what they know and how much they know more than you and how you can figure out where to go next.

When someone is talking to you and they seem to be making assumptions that are

significant. It's a significantly bigger scope. It's a significantly broader assumption.

You have no idea how they got from point A to point B. This is again an opportunity or a time

where you want to investigate and go learn more. Put on that fellow craft, put on that

enterprise apron and get to work. These interactions, and you can have these interactions

with, again, folks online, folks in your lodge, folks in your family, folks in your life,

all over the place. You're going to want to try your best to never let an opportunity go by,

or you can't pick up something new and learn from it. As such, you'll move up the development

the ladder and it gives you skillset or a different knowledge domain. From there, you'll be able to

better be a change agent and create the change you want to see in the world. This is vitally important.

You will, again, almost never meet somebody on your exact level because it would require them to

have almost identical experience. Even folks that are in your peer group, you can learn from

by asking those investigative questions and understanding essentially where they come from.

Absorb that context, drive that line of inquiry, and you'll find that your experience as

a Mason starts to become much more enriched by the people around you. You'll reduce the biases

that you come to the table with, which, again, reduces your efficacy to create change in the world.