“What we think of as coaching was, sports historians say, a distinctly American development. During the nineteenth century, Britain had the more avid sporting culture; its leisure classes went in for games like cricket, golf, and soccer. But the aristocratic origins produced an ethos of amateurism: you didn’t want to seem to be trying to hard.”
Atul Gawande, Coaching a Surgeon - New Yorker
I usually love Atul Gawande, but I think he’s off-point about the real ethos of amateurism—which really just denotes a kind of love. Conflating amateurism with a specific anthropological tidbit is a disservice to people that pursue things for love. A lover can bring much more to a situation than someone that is a professional (which, to be rhetorically unkind, could be called a mercenary). I want more people in the world doing things out of love.
