Always Learning

Teaching and learning is what we humans do. We are always learning. That chocolate cake recipe that you’ve made over and over? You know it so well that you don’t need the cookbook. Your brain has encoded the instructions, and you can recall them easily. You’ve learned them.

Does it mean you won’t make a mistake? You might, but you know the recipe so well that it can be fixed without much drama.

I play the piano. Some days, I spend up to an hour repeating a problematic passage. I ensure no one else is home and the windows are closed. No one needs to hear the rehearsal. Especially if said rehearsal focuses on 32 bars of the same thing. Over and over. At a slower speed than it should be. Sometimes, note by painful note.

When it comes to the performance, do I make mistakes? You bet. By then, I’m so familiar with the string of notes that a slip is easily covered. I know what’s coming next. I know where the stumble might happen and prepare for it. That’s learning, folks.

Humans are lifelong learners. We’re never too young or old to learn something new or re-learn an old skill.

A lady at my gym told me the other day she only learned to ride a bicycle in her sixties. Now, she rides it everywhere. She loves the feel of the breeze on her face. I asked her why she didn’t learn as a child.

She told me she was too scared. She fell off a friend’s bike and never tried again. How long ago was the fall? She’d put fifty years between falling off as a kid and learning to ride as an adult.