Learning A New Skill

Why does it scare us? Perhaps it’s admitting our flaws, that perhaps we’re not the perfect beings we wish we were. Imperfections are hard to accept. Weakness causes us to fail, to die. And yet, from birth, we accept weakness without thought, hesitation or qualms. Life was much simple back when asking for help wasn’t seen as a sign of inferiority or a lack of intelligence. Quite the opposite. Asking questions was the mark of an inquisitive, curious child with a ravenous mind for knowledge.

At what point did it change? When did I become so concerned with my appearance that I forgot that I had been born with nothing? Maybe it happened when I became complacent. My day-to-day had grown warm and inviting, so comforting that it was easy to do on autopilot. Nothing fazed me anymore. There was no novelty to my days. People came to me for guidance, and now…well now, the tables had turned. Like a cruel joke, time regressed and once again, I was reminded of my former self, years young with no experience, no ounce of life lived.

At that moment, I stood before an Academy of arts. I had never been an artistic person. The magic for me happened in my cerebral cortex, behind hundreds of numbers and algorithms. Yet, none of that helped me touch the softer side of humanity, the side that didn’t need reason to act, that was free to feel.

I wanted to learn to be that way, and what better way than through the arts. Did it matter, really, what art I learned? I just needed to learn a new skill, something different, something I never learned when I was training to be successful, rich, and pursued. I needed to learn to be me.