The Element of Understanding That Life is a Learning Adventure and Its Hope for Never Being Afraid To Go Back to School

Life is a learning adventure.

Learning is what we do throughout life.

We learn to read, write and count.

We learn geography.

We learn history.

We learn literature.

We learn chemistry.

We learn biology.

We learn physics.

We learn algebra, geometry, calculus.

We learn things from books

We also learn things outside of books.

We learn to do things with our hands.

We learn to draw, to juggle, to play the piano, to throw a ball.

We learn to do things with our legs.

We learn to skip, to skate, to surf, to dance.

We learn to do chores.

We learn things because we have to.

We learn things because we want to.

We learn to swim, to play basketball, to start baseball card collections, or play on our X boxes.

Yes, ABC and 123 is only the beginning of our lifelong learning adventure.

When the moment arises and there’s something we need to learn, or the opportunity arises, and there’s something we want to learn, we learn.

I grew up in India in a middle class family. Growing up, my family didn’t own a car or a scooter.

We went to school in a rickshaw and walked to school, and to our friend’s houses, as soon as we were old enough to do so.

By the time each one of us got to high school, we were given a bicycle and we were expected to bike to school.

And of course each one of us learned to bike.

Learning how to balance and learning how to brake took some time.

We fell, we got scrapes and bruises, but eventually, we picked it up.

Within the arc of the opportunities available to us, we learned many different things.

My sister Rosie, my brother David and I learned to swim, because we gained access to a pool which was within walking distance of our house.

The pool was part of RSI, an officer’s institute meant for army officers and their families.

I do not remember the details of how we were allowed to use the RSI pool, but this is where we learned to swim.

Some memories stand out from those days.

One was of my sister Rosie almost drowning one day.  My brother David spotted she was in distress in the nick of time and rescued her, even being half her size.

I also remember the day David and I went swimming and our friend Christine Marley broke her leg.

We went to her house that day to invite her to go swimming with us.

But her mother, Mrs. Marley said, “I am so sorry, dears, but I can’t let Christine go with you. Knowing how mischievous Christine is, she will do something foolish like venture into the deep. I am sorry, but she will have to stay home today. She can go with you another day when you have an adult accompanying you.”

So David and I went to RSI alone, promising to return to play with Christine after we were done swimming.

When we returned to the Marley house, we learned Christine had been playing hide and seek with some neighbors in a building that was under construction next to her house and she had jumped off the roof onto a ledge to hide, but had missed the ledge and fallen to the ground, breaking her leg in several places. Christine was in hospital and an emergency surgery was performed on her leg.  For the next 6 months, she would stay home recuperating.

Maybe Christine should have gone swimming with us after all, David and I thought.

We learned biking out of necessity and swimming out of a desire to.

Both brought us joy.

Our natural leanings would lead us to learn other things which would bring us joy.

Me and my brother David learned the basics of the guitar from our friend Janet.

David and his guitar became a staple of all our family gatherings starting from that time. Singing at family gatherings is a Lobo tradition, and certain songs such as Hawa Na Gila have become a staple, as you learned from my post Family Songs.

As for me, as soon as I had learned the basic chords of A, B, C D and F, I was drawn to composing and I composed 30 songs during what would and should have been my first year of college.

I was not some super kid who was able to juggle college and freelance writing and composing songs and giving English language tuition to foreign students all at once.

Something had to suffer from my lack of focus and scattered energies.

It was college.

Luckily for me, as I explained in Why I Can Never Get a Job at Google, my freelance writing landed me a copywriting job.

The arc of our opportunities during our teen years also included caroms and badminton.

We were given a caroms board and a badminton set and we learned caroms and badminton and became quite addicted, especially to caroms.

There was a six month stretch when David, Janet and I played caroms every single day, heading out to eat pani puri on M.G. Road after.

Also, when I was a tween, I was given a British Council Library membership and a scrabble board for one of my birthdays.

I was delighted and lost no time putting them both to good use.

I have played many great scrabble games over the years with different opponents.

Two opponents stand out.

One was Eugene Titus who worked with me during my MAA days, a scrabble whiz if ever there was one.

Pitted against each other in the finals of an MAA match, I discovered him to be a superbly crafty player, whose strategy was to use the least number of letters and create the smallest possible words on each turn, to limit my openings.
I followed suit and we ended up playing a cat and mouse game.

I had never encountered anything like that before and I have never encountered anything like that since.

Another scrabble opponent who stands out in memory is Mira Prabhu.

She and I would meet up every few years and have these scrabble marathons.

We were a great match for each other, playing 7 letter word for 7 letter word, but she was so much faster than me.

In a timed match, there would be no contest.  Mira would win.  Luckily, we did not play with a timer.

Games are a good test of character.

We have to learn how to win and we have to learn how to lose.

It is always interesting to watch different people’s reactions to winning and losing.

We should be able to win like Joshua Waitzkin does in Searching for Bobby Fischer – to win without gloating, that is.

And we should be able to lose with our sense of humor intact.

When we are very young, some of us can’t do this.

“Play the game, again” we will order, each time we lose, unable to stomach our losses.

Our losses cause us to have a fit, go into sulks, or burst into tears.

We have to learn to grow out of this.

Learning takes on a great importance as we become responsible for ourselves.

We have to learn to look after ourselves.

We have to learn to become financially independent, put a roof over our heads, put food on the table, clothe ourselves, pay our bills.

If we get married and start a family, we have to learn to do all of this for our family, juggling family obligations to our birth family and the new family we have started, if we have to, with a cool head.

We have to learn to manage our time, manage our money, manage our temper, manage our relationships.

We have to learn restraint so we don’t jeopardize anything that is important to us.

One of the most important things is our health.

We have to learn to look after our health, which means learning about food, exercise, sleep, stress reduction and medications.

It seems like a lot to learn, but we are natural learning machines.

Just when we think we can’t do something, we can.

Did I ever dream I would learn to cook, and what’s more, enjoy cooking?

No!

Did I ever dream I would learn to drive, and be able not just to get myself to work and back, but to go on car trips to Oregon and So Cal?

No!

Did I ever dream I would start my own creative shop one day?

No!

Did I ever dream I would have two different careers, as different as apples and oranges, and make them work?

No!

We are natural learning machines.

This is what it boils down to.

What determines the kinds of things we will learn?

The arc of problems and opportunities we experience, and the stage of life we are in – this is what determines what we will learn.

When we are young and in peak health, we will not be too concerned about learning about the food we eat, other than we like the taste of it.

But as we grow older, we will start caring about what we eat.

We learn what foods are good for us, what are not good for us.

We learn what makes us sick

If we have any discipline, we will try to avoid getting sick.

We will exercise.

We will join 24 Hour Fitness or Golds Gym to do Zumba, Yoga, or run on a treadmill.

If we feel ill, we will try to learn what our symptoms mean by looking them up on the internet.

When my Mum was alive, she once developed a terribly painful rash on her torso.

I looked up her symptoms on the internet and diagnosed it as shingles.

I took her to the doctor. The doctor asked “What seems to be the problem today?”, I answered “My mother has shingles”

The doctor was surprised.

He examined Mummy and said, “Yes, indeed, she has shingles.  How did you know? Are you in the medical profession?”

I was flattered.

I told him I had figured it out from the internet.

We are drawn to be curious about certain topics.

I had always been interested in medical topics.

I do not need an inducement to check something out on the internet if it is medically related.

I sometimes think I will have to come back in another life to be a doctor.

Music, movies, cooking and pro sports are areas of most people’s lives in which they need no inducement to learn.

People who love music (and most of us do) accumulate a vast treasure house of information about the artists, albums and songs they like.

People who love movies (and most people do) accumulate a vast treasure house of information about movies and everything to do with movies.

People who love pro sports (and a lot of people do) accumulate a vast treasure house of information about games and players and coaches.

People who love to cook (and a lot of people do) will accumulate a vast treasure house of information about food and spices and methods of cooking and the best places to eat this or that dish.

As we become exposed to new frontiers in any area of our lives, our tastes will evolve and our horizons will expand.

When I was young, I liked pop and disco music; I composed pop songs and I loved going to the disco because I liked to dance.  Today I listen to rock music at non-disco decibels. Every generation starts out liking a certain kind of music , which it likes to listen to as loudly as possible, and then its tastes become more evolved.

Yes, our preferences will change - in food, in music, in what we like and don’t like.

Ideally, we should become more open and more experimental.

There was a time, I could never imagine liking non-spicy food, but I acquired a taste for non-spicy food.

There was a time when sushi seemed yucky to me, but I acquired a taste for sushi. Lion King, anyone?

We are often required to learn new things because of a health issue.

Health issues almost always require us to restyle our lives.

I suffered a depression in my thirties and made changes for life.

Today's careers will require continuous learning too.

Each job has its own set of skills.

These skills will change as time goes by.

Some jobs may even become obsolete. When this happens, we will need to learn new skills and retrain for another job.

Our career paths could span multiple companies.

Going to a new company may mean adapting to a different organizational structure, different roles and responsibilities, and different technologies and processes.

One company will use Baan, another Oracle, another SAP.

One company will use Tableau, another Cognos, another Birst.

One company will use Xactly, another Callidus, another Excel, another Varicent.

My examples are all related to Commissions Administration, but you get my gist.

You will have to be prepared to keep pace with change.

As Peter Drucker said, “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change”.  
In our personal lives too, we must keep pace with change.

The more we learn to do that, the fewer frustrations we will experience.

Like I learned Excel, Centive, Xactly, Varicent in order to become a Commissions Consultant, I have also learned to do things in my personal life to stay abreast of change.

I learned how to do my taxes on Turbo Tax.

I learned about investments and personal finance.

Learning about taxes and investments and personal finance has helped me reduce the risk of foolish mistakes.

We can’t avoid mistakes altogether.

Mistakes are a part of the learning process.

But knowing what the mistake is and how it can be avoided in the future is where learning about taxes and investments and personal finance comes into play.

We learn things the hard way and the easy way.

When it comes to relationships and friendships, we typically learn the hard way.

That’s okay. All that matters is that we have learned our lessons from the experience.

If you are like me, you want to squeeze as much pleasure out of life as possible.

But you may learn the hard way - like I did - that your limits and tolerances are lower than other people’s limits.

As I told you in one of my recent posts, I once wished to attain a Size 1 figure like I saw on one of my friends.  I learned the hard way I couldn’t.

Once upon a time during my hard core feminist days, I wanted to drink men under the table – but I learned the hard way I am unable to process alcohol like other people can - I get intoxicated faster and suffer a bad hangover even from the tiniest amount of alcohol. And so I had to give it up.

All this learning is part of the great learning adventure that is life.

We have to take the good with the bad.

The joys with the sorrows

The delights with the disappointments

The gains with the losses

The ups with the downs

The bouquets with the brickbats
Learning all the while.

Every sorrow, every loss, every up, every brickbat is a learning moment.

“In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists,” said Eric Hoffer.

We don’t want to be beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

“But Minoo, I am an old dog - I can’t learn new tricks.”

Yes, you can!

As Leonardo da Vinci said, “Learning never exhausts the mind.”

“But Minoo, do I have to go back to school to learn?”

Maybe you do, maybe you don’t.

Maybe you can find someone to apprentice to.

If you do, that’s great.

Otherwise, even though you will do most of your learning on the job, you may still need this or that credential or certification to get a foot in the door and to get people to take you seriously.

This is why I paid to do the Xactly Administrators Course from my own pocket.

I needed to be taken seriously.

Learn to use your judgment and your powers of observation to identify gaps in your knowledge and how best to plug them so you can be taken seriously.

Plugging the gaps in your knowledge can never be a waste.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

No matter how much you have learned, you will always have a lot more to learn.

Don’t neglect what you have to learn about relationships.

When it comes to relationships, think about what Daniel J Boorstin said, “Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.”
The more you learn, the freer you will be.

To quote Daniel J Boorstin again: “Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.”
Here are some examples from my own life: 

I never thought I would be the owner of my own creative shop.

I never thought I would drive.

I never thought I would become a numbers person.

I never thought I would become a Commissions Consultant.

I never thought I would be able to do my own taxes.

I never thought I would be able to write 280 blog posts.

I never thought I would become a good friend to my daughter.

I never thought I would become a person who regularly meditates.

I never thought I would evolve into a person without anger management issues.

Yes, as we learn more, our lives will become less bounded.

Learning is our ticket to break out of the trap of our current personalities and circumstances, whatever they may be.

I will end with this quote from Jim Rohn: “Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.”

As always thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M …..a Pearl Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay and Audrey for their comments and compliments and thanks to the rest of you for your votes, pins and likes.  Much appreciated.