If when I had my first kiss with a girl I really liked I thought I knew happiness, I didn’t know happiness. If the first time I was rejected from a girl I had a crush on I thought I knew pain, I didn’t know anything.
I know what it means to learn. I know how humiliating, how painful learning is. I know what it feels like to allow myself to dream, allowing my expectations to fly by the strict limitations that reality demands of all of us-- to think that when I got my guitar that I would be playing the most gorgeous songs in a matter of weeks-- to think that when I signed up for my first Japanese class I would be speaking, reading, writing, and comprehending it perfectly in a year.
It’s tragic to be so optimistic sometimes. Because the truth is hours and hours of practice would have me play a song imperfectly at my best and awkwardly starting over several times playing in front of others, my heart beating faster than the tempo and my fingers shaking out of nervousness so that the strings buzz when I strum.
The reality is that the same phrase that I have practiced over and over again, in the moment I can’t recall it when I need it the most—throwing off the flow of conversation. When I do recall it, I pronounce it as if I had just picked up the textbook that morning, betraying the fact that I had been studying for several years.
Most of all I know what it’s like to feel that I have finally gotten the hang of it, only to find that I haven’t even broken the surface of the lesson. I long desperately to get it right the first time, to get perfect marks. My deep, overwhelming desire to be perfect will get me no further than anyone else and I’ll find that my best intentions won’t earn me any extra credit. I’ll learn the hard way like everyone else. I will be humiliated too. I will get the answer wrong though I painstakingly put thought into my answer, the song won’t be perfect though I have been practicing for as long as I can remember.
We learn so that we can one day be good at something, to be skillful and capable. We see those who have learned and they are so graceful and strong. We’re inspired to start learning whatever it may be. And at some point in the process we get to the point where we realize how demoralizing learning anything can really be. The phenomenon acts as a sort of gate-keeper to test those who deserve mastery and filter out those who aren’t willing to go through all the pain it takes to earn it.
When we’re learning and we taste failure-- pure, dark, undiluted failure, how are we to respond? When we thought we had the answer in our grasp only to find that we were not even close, what do we do? Life can be so monotonous and routine, that we forget we can experience profound levels of joy and pain. So when we do, we don’t know how to react—we let it out in tears of joy or tears of pain—we rid ourselves of such levels of feeling.
I don’t know anything. With no other choice but to wake up the next morning, get dressed, and take care of my responsibilities I have no other option than to resume the course despite the humiliation, despite the disappointment, the frustration, the discouragement. I have no choice but keep practicing, to keep learning, and to keep hoping that one day I will finally have learnt something.
