On and on...lifelong learning

My life has been taken over by a voracious beast. The more I tend to it, the more it demands. The tasks it sets are many and varied, each demanding a different skill, some of which I don’t have and never realised I needed.  Just as I think I am maybe just starting to understand, the rules change and I despair that for every piece of learning I attempt there are twenty other things I need to know beforehand.

I know there is growth in challenge, in reaching beyond boundaries. A wise lecturer told us recently that the biggest hurdle to learning as an older (!) person was that of putting aside the ego.  We wear our many life skills proudly as a badge of achievement. There is nothing wrong in that, we do have a lot of experience to draw on. It is arrogance that gets in our way.  My personal challenge is to avoid letting my perceived stupidity erode my hard won self confidence.

I have known the beautiful young boy in the picture since he was born. He is about to leave school but for now each Friday he sits across from me in the Photoshop class. This is a world in which he is comfortable and familiar. The average age of the class members is probably fifty and all but two are women. The youngest, he generously answers our questions, silly and otherwise. His life challenges are different from mine. I hope that during his life there is someone to help him when he needs it.

Meanwhile, I’ll make the cake!