Filling the Unforgiving Minute

Continuing the theme from my previous post - The Kinesthetic Life - I am reminded of how Rudyard Kipling described in his poem "If-" the effort of "filling the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run" and how this contrasts with how my children move around the game of Minecraft which they so adore.

In Minecraft my children seem able to traverse immense distances in the briefest times, pretty much by sprinting through the air, as the character above left is so helpfully illustrating. They inform me that this luxury is only usually available in 'creative' mode, and that in 'survival' mode their characters must cross computer-generated terrain, and might even become 'hungry' if they use up too much energy. Notwithstanding this, I feel that the game offers little resistance to their efforts. Unlike a piece of marble ready for sculpting it has no 'grain' with which they are forced to work, as Michelangelo was forced with his statue of David (above right). They want to build a castle in the air? The only thing stopping them is boredom, and possibly other on-line players who might want to destroy the castle because they too are suffering from the very same boredom.

The unforgiving minute, however, offers resistance every step of the way, and you know by the end whether you really have filled it with sixty seconds' worth of distance run. There is a 'grain' in the muscles that can be felt, and you must respect its contours and work with it if you want to achieve your aim during this minute and throughout your life.

At a low point during the Minecraft session today I switched the Xbox 360 off at the wall-socket and got my children into their trainers for a 1 lap run round the block - a distance of 0.8 miles but an 'ultra' for them. By the end my youngest complained of "two stitches" and also of coming last. I'm not cruel but I smiled and told him there's a valuable lesson concerning effort and result to be learned there, something that Minecraft certainly will not teach him in 'creative' mode. Indeed, for true artistic creativity there needs to be a resistant grain to work both with and against. If you don't believe me, just ask Michelangelo...