What are You Learning this Year?

3 years back, I picked up golf. 2 years back, I was still struggling with golf so continued learning golf. Last year, I committed to Karate. This year, I am giving myself up to piano and western classical music. Today, I had my first class in the same music school as my kids. My class was earlier than my teenage daughter’s so I was already practising when she strode in. She marches upto me, looking as much amused as bemused; not really knowing how to react as she sees me struggling with the piano keys and promptly announces matter-of-factly:  “Here, you are not my mother.” Before it registers, she has already vanished into her singing class. I had the music notes to worry about than to think about what she said. See, she doesn’t see adults learning around her except her funny mom who picks up a new thing to learn every year.

Couple of parents watched me enjoying the struggle of learning and said you are an inspiration. I know the idea of learning inspires them but they are unlikely to be inspired enough to commit themselves and their time to something that they will have to battle with because that is what learning is. Battling your grey cells with new information to process. This battling, this struggle is the exercise what our brain needs the most to stay young, healthy and fit right till we breath our last. That’s what the researchers at the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital have found.

I spoke to my best friend to share the excitement of the new thing I am learning this year. She shares how she struggles to get her kids to their badminton class. She acknowledged it is possibly because she herself is too lazy to do anything herself. I know it is not as much as laziness as the ennui of existence that catches up with you.

I admire the parents who bring their kids to the golf course for their classes because I cannot find enough commitment in me to just sit somewhere while the kids experience the joy of learning. I leave for the golf course at the time I said I would because I love practising and playing. I have never had to push the kids to attend their class because I would rather that they do something out of love, rather than because I am pushing them to do. Their love for golf has only grown as I left them to figure out that for themselves.

Though, I have learnt this the hard way. Few months back, my daughter told me how I had killed her love for Art by buying her books on famous artists and history of World Art. I listened to her in numb silence because I finally understood why she didn’t want to do anything with Art anymore after being such a prodigious and a passionate artist. My over-providing for her and giving her more than she asked for or was ready for is what killed her love for Art. I had also inadvertently killed her love for piano and maths earlier on. I am learning to give her space to discover herself and find her inner commitment. Being left to her own devices to figure out things, she came back to piano after 4 years.

Having burnt myself, I realised how only love and inner inspiration can drive learning. External motivation, grades, rewards, incentives and punishments only kills the inherent genius in kids and in people. That is why having grown up with external motivation, grades, incentives, rewards and punishments; by the time we have grown up, we are left up with zero inner inspiration, passion and joy of learning. That is why, we age.

Dying is inevitable, aging is not. We age by choice by not keeping alive love, passion and inspiration in us. I read someplace sadness is not the opposite of happiness, boredom is. Boredom sets in when we are not learning, growing and evolving; when we are not challenged to grow beyond who we are at this moment. Joy is in increasing our fitness across the 4 bodies of our Being - physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual - by taking on learning something to mastery.

What are you doing this year to grow? Which hobby will you re-invest yourself in? Which creative art or sport will you commit yourself to mastery? Which mountain will you scale or new land will you discover? Your age, your health, time, money - nothing is a barrier. The real barrier is inside your head.

All the thoughts that are racing in your head telling you why you cannot pick-up something new to learn are the barriers you are choosing. You can change the clothes you are wearing, so can you change your thoughts to support you to travel in the direction you want to explore. You are not your clothes, you have clothes. You are not your thoughts and emotions, you have thoughts and emotions. Just as you choose your clothes, you choose your thoughts. And, the thoughts you choose determine your lifestyle; determines the quantum of happiness, peace and fulfilment in your life.

You are bigger than your thoughts, bigger than your emotions, bigger than your circumstances. Stand up to walk towards the Life of your choice. God did not send us to Earth with a destiny already written out. We are made in the likeness of God - as a creator, a creator of our Life. (S)he sent us here with an empty whiteboard to write our destiny. We can also rub everything to draw something new.

You don’t believe it. That is why you won’t create it. Suspend your disbelief, resignation, cynicism for a moment and step into your dreams lying hidden inside you, with childlike trust and faith.

Now, let's have a conversation.

Love,
Jyoti.

References: What does it take to be a Super-Ager?