I am very good at several things. This is fortunate because I am absolutely terrible at many others. I recommend this arrangement. Being competent is useful. Being incompetent is interesting. There is a strange point in adulthood when people begin avoiding activities they are not already good at. Children do not behave this way. Give a child a violin and he will create sounds that violate international treaties for hours without experiencing a single moment of embarrassment. Adults take one lesson and apologize to the instructor. “I’m sorry, I’m terrible.” Of course you’re terrible. You started forty-five minutes ago. I think success makes this worse. The more competent people become in their professional lives, the less comfortable they sometimes are with looking foolish. If you are accustomed to being the person in the room who knows what to do, becoming a beginner can feel strangely threatening. Which is exactly why it is so good for you. <\/p>\n
I have always loved people who are willing to try things badly. Skiing. Dancing. Cooking. Learning another language. Golf. Flying. Painting. Surfing. Whatever. There is a humility built into being new. Your body refuses instructions that sound perfectly reasonable. Someone says, “Just relax.” You immediately become less relaxed. You discover muscles you apparently owned without authorization. You learn that people who are good at things make them look dramatically easier than they are. This is useful information. I once heard someone say that adulthood is basically the process of becoming increasingly efficient at avoiding embarrassment. That sounds terribly boring. Some of my favorite memories involve doing things badly. Getting lost. Mispronouncing something. Attempting a sport with wildly misplaced confidence. Ordering food I had no idea how to eat. There is usually a moment when you realize you have two choices: be embarrassed, or laugh. Laughing is almost always more fun. <\/p>\n
This is one reason I like traveling. Travel turns you back into a beginner. Suddenly you don’t know where anything is. You don’t understand the train system. You can’t operate the shower. You are standing in a pharmacy attempting to communicate “allergy medicine” through interpretive dance. It is good for the ego. And ego needs exercise just like everything else. Sometimes stretching is involved. I also find beginners attractive. Not because incompetence itself is seductive. Please do not intentionally crash the sailboat. But there is something charming about watching a capable man encounter something he cannot control. Especially if he handles it gracefully. A man who can laugh when he is bad at something is revealing confidence far more convincingly than a man who needs to win every time. We all know the person who cannot casually lose. At tennis. At cards. At trivia. At an argument about which route is faster. This person can make miniature golf feel like a board meeting. No thank you. Give me someone who swings, misses spectacularly, looks at me and says, “I believe the equipment is defective.” That man gets another drink. <\/p>\n
Being a beginner also wakes up the brain. Everything is vivid because everything requires attention. Drive the same route every day and you barely notice it. Drive in a foreign country and suddenly every road sign becomes a matter of existential importance. Routine compresses time. Novelty expands it. This may be one reason childhood seems so enormous in memory. Everything was new. First airplane. First hotel. First kiss. First job. First heartbreak. Adulthood can become a sequence of familiar rooms unless we deliberately open new doors. So I think we should keep collecting first times. Not reckless ones. Interesting ones. Take a pottery class. Learn to make pasta. Try horseback riding. Attempt ballroom dancing. Go somewhere you cannot speak the language. Read about something you know absolutely nothing about. Let someone younger teach you. Let someone older teach you. Ask the dumb question. Dumb questions are often useful. Most people in the room are secretly relieved someone else asked. <\/p>\n
And don’t wait to become “the kind of person” who does something. People say this all the time. “I’m not really a museum person.” “I’m not a hiking person.” “I’m not a dancing person.” Perhaps. Or perhaps you simply haven’t liked the museum, hike or dance yet. Identity can become another form of laziness. We decide who we are and then stop collecting evidence. I would rather remain slightly uncertain. Maybe I am the kind of woman who does this. Let’s see. That’s a wonderful sentence. Let’s see. Maybe I’ll love it. Maybe I will hate it. Maybe I will discover I have a hidden talent. Maybe I will discover I have absolutely no talent and a very funny story. Both outcomes have value. There is enormous freedom in no longer needing to be impressive. And perhaps this is one of the pleasures of getting older. You have already survived enough humiliation to know that most of it is temporary. You can fall. You can fail. You can look ridiculous. People move on. So do you. And sometimes, very occasionally, the thing you were terrible at becomes something you love. Then one day someone new watches you do it and says: “You’re so good at that.” And you smile. Because you remember when you weren’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am very good at several things. This is fortunate because I am absolutely terrible at many others. I recommend this arrangement. Being competent is useful. Being incompetent is interesting. There is a strange point in adulthood when people begin avoiding activities they are not already good at. Children do not behave this way. Give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n