What’s something most people don’t understand?
Learn continually. There’s always “one more thing” to learn.
Steve Jobs
Growing up, mum used to ride a 2-wheeler. The joke in the family was, if you are headed out after mum had left, and there was traffic on the route, then, mum was holding up traffic. I’ve sat behind mum on the bike, where she rode in the middle of the street at 40. Irrespective of who was behind her, she kept at 40 and refused to budge off the lane she was on. I always carried a stole, that I used to hide my face behind because I did not want the bus drivers to recognise me on the days that Mum did not drop me off. But all of us knew, that Mum always wanted a car, and she got one eventually. The assumption I had made was that she just wanted to sit in her own car, but what she really wanted, was to drive her own car, which she did a year after she got her car. She went for classes and made the effort to learn to drive a manual transmission car when she was on the riper end of 50. And Mum drove her car, the way she had been riding her bike, on a lane she preferred. While her driving gave me palpitations, and I was sorely tempted to just do the driving, sitting next to her while she man-handled the gears, shifting from 1st to 2nd or on occasion from 1st to 4th, inadvertently revving the engine and not knowing that’s really what she was doing, I had to admire her focus. Mum was my best example for,
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young”
Henry Ford
She always worked towards ‘practice makes perfect’. Mum’s office was in a crowded place, there was barely any space for a 2-wheeler to pass, and Mum used to get her car in through those spaces. On that score, she was probably more like an ‘auto’ driver than a car driver. She had a sailor’s mouth with a trucker’s dialect if you cut her off on the road. She always re-defined road rage. Thank god for a functional AC in the car! With the windows rolled up, only I was aware of the extent of her dictionary. She drove me around to pick up random things from crazy locations. She loved to drive. I loved to be driven around. We were the perfect pair, especially during the later months of my pregnancy, when the steering wheel came in the way.
She got a mobile, and learned to use one. Games, Facebook, Apps, Widgets, she figured it all out. She downloaded everything. She would forward everything. And then she would reset her device. Often. Without realizing that was what she had done. She was part of every WhatsApp group ever created in the history of WhatsApp. She was always so engrossed on her device, that she hardly left it lying around idle. At no point in her life, did Mum ever say, she had no clue. If I spent some time with the kids and explained something on the device to them, then she would also pay attention to learn it. There was never a ‘this is too much information’ complaint from her end.
She got a laptop and made the effort to figure it out. She used to write such beautiful formal letters on her email to us and the sign it off informally. And she used to be such a sporty Farmville enthusiast. She made the most random friend requests on Facebook. So much so, that I was always terrified for her safety. When I left my desktop at her place, she made an effort to learn how to use it. I created my first instructional design manual for the desktop I had left behind so she could learn and she used it, religiously. She never gave up. And when the kids were born, she made an effort to keep abreast of the changes. And when she did not know something, then she would pretend she was aware, like it was no big deal. She had never used diapers on us, so she assumed that the diaper had unlimited capacity. So, the first time she had the kid hanging around her ankles, she forgot to change the diaper for close to 4 hours, and the diaper had filled and then disintegrated and burst, and every time the kid sat somewhere there was a tiny mound of diaper granules left behind. She had no clue that’s what it was, and she did not even realise until I came back and told her that’s what it was. She just assumed that the toddler she had been caring for had no urgent requirement for the facilities. It was hilarious until I had to go around with the pan to scoop up diaper granules from various corners of the room. But she was quick to apologize and learn how often to make that change. It was always, ‘one more thing’ to figure out. She happily completed the ‘Discover Scuba’ certification, even though she did not know how to swim.
Her first visit to the Middle East was to Muscat and with absolutely no Arabic vocabulary, she boarded a bus, to head to the Museum. Nothing fazed mum, because mentally she was always geared to learn. And this is what most people don’t understand. The fact that there is always ‘one more thing’ to learn. And if you show the inclination to learn, then you will find teachers wherever you go. You can never be proficient enough. Technology keeps evolving and you can never really say you’ve learned it all. Change is the only constant. Everything grows. Everything develops. And what we knew yesterday is too little, and what we know today, is barely sufficient, and our future will change based on what we are willing to learn today. It is the attitude that makes all the difference.
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
Epictetus
Just a little more 