You Live, You Learn

I’ve been taking a lot of courses lately. Some people asked if I’m having a mid-life crisis. And I say, yes I am, although I’m just 31 this year. I heard a talk recently and the speaker asked this question, “If you can live to a 100 years, how many days would you have to live?” If you think about it, if you can live to 100 years old, you only have 36,500 days to live. Not a big number, isn’t it? And most of us won’t live till 100. I, for one, do not foresee myself living beyond 60 (thus the mid-life crisis). Partly cos’ of my family’s health history but mostly cos’ of the environment we live in today – our genetically modified food items, high stress levels and ecological factors like pollution are reasons why people nowadays do not have the longevity that the people in the olden times had. So if I can live to 60 years old, I have only 10,585 days left to live. I have easily used up 11,315 days of my life. See! When you break it down like that it’s not really a lot isn’t it?

If you don't do something about your life, you will see it fly by like the torn pages of a calendar

Of cos’, not everyone is as pessimistic as me. Some think that they will live much longer than 60. But think about it, even if you do live beyond 60, you might be too sick or too weak to pick up some things that you wanna learn by then. For example, how do you pick up martial arts or physically-intensive courses like wakeboarding when you’re 60 years old? I’m learning aikido now and I can see that I’m not as agile as some of the teenagers when it comes to doing the physical stuff like rolling on the floor, walking across the floor on your knees etc. And I’m only 31! I’m not saying it’s impossible to learn these things when you’re older, just a lot tougher. Besides, the earlier you learn something in life, the longer time you have to use the knowledge. I don’t see the point in picking up a useful skill that can be only used for the remaining 5 years of your life.

Not everyone can be as lucky as these women to be able to do all these activities at that age

I’ve spent the past few years taking up academic studies and I’m sick of it now. I had more free time the earlier part of this year and it made me realised that there’s more to life than just studying and working. That was when I decided to take up all the courses and interests that I’ve always wanted to learn and pick up but never found the motivation to do so. Within a few months, I enrolled myself and my family in a myriad of activities to fill up my time. Now all my weeknights are almost filled – Monday nights are filled with yoga lessons and my community volunteer meetings, Wednesday nights are spent learning how to improve my limited swimming skills, Thursday nights are guitar nights and on Friday nights, I’m practising aikido. All these activities are not specialised in one area – there’s sports, martial arts, music, exercise and volunteer work. Totally different from one another and that’s how I’m going to live my life from now on – with diversity and variety. And after completing these courses, I have every intention of taking up other courses like golf, speed reading, painting, pool, make-up, hairstyling, dancing etc. – all the things I’ve always wanted to learn.

If you're wondering why I'm not so active in Facebook lately, these are the reasons why...

I believe everything has a technique. Reading has a technique, dancing has a technique, and even the simplest thing like eating has a technique. You may be able to swim but can you survive if you’re dropped in an open sea? I may be able to play pool but I’m sure I can further improve my game if I can read the game instead of just aiming to put the balls into the pockets. So what I wanna learn by taking up these courses is the technique. Just in case I’m put in certain situations, I can hold up on my own if I know the technique to doing certain stuff.

Some people may think, “Why is she taking up courses like make-up, hairstyling, dancing? Is she gonna be a make-up artist or something?” See, I’m just learning the basics. I’m not gonna strike out on my own and totally change my profession (it’s not my interest anyway). I’m taking up these courses for very practical reasons. For example, why make-up and hairstyling? The reason being, cos’ I have a daughter. There are times when I need to doll her up for occasions like Hari Raya or her school concert and I would feel handicapped cos’ I totally don’t know how to make her up or do her hair. I’m a tomboy through and through. I don’t even know how to plait hair for crying out loud! In the past, I would usually pay a professional to make us up when we go for some photo-taking session at the studio. If I have these skills, next time, I could always do our own make-up and not waste the money on paying others. So you see, I’m a very practical person.

Anyone dare to try out my make-up skills after the course?

And being the neurotic me, I have actually mapped out a list of courses that I wanna take up within these 2 or 3 years. After that, I might continue with my academic studies but for now, I just wanna learn everything non-academic. When I was younger, I wanted to take up lots of courses but my family wasn’t well-off. So now I wanna give my daughter something that I can’t get when I was younger – the opportunity to learn anything she wants. Currently, I’m enrolling her in lots of courses to find out what are her interests and with the hope that she’ll be able to find one that she can be good at. Unfortunately, due to her learning disability, she will take double the time it takes for normal kids to learn. But I’m willing to wait and I’m not giving up until she masters them.

I realised that I’d rather be Jack of All Trades than Master of One. It’s boring to be just a Master of One and nothing else. I’ve seen people work their whole lives and that’s all they’re good at – working. Then there are others who come up with a million and one reasons not to make that change in their life – “I’m too busy to upgrade myself cos’ I have to work overtime all the time”, “I’m too busy to learn new things cos’ I have family commitments”, “I can’t take these courses cos’ I have no money”. I’ve heard it all before. Well, there’s news for you. If you don’t start doing things for yourself, very soon your life will just pass you by and you’ll be wondering what you’ve been doing all these while. And you will regret not living your life the way you want it to be! I’m not saying you should drop all your commitments and start pursuing a new interest. I’m just saying that you should set aside an hour or two off your busy schedule and do things for yourself. Pursue what you like and put yourself first once in awhile. That’s all.

Any of these situations look familiar to you?

And to me, all the reasons above are just excuses. I’m working, a wife and a mother too. If I can find the time to do these extra-curricular activities, why can’t you? And money shouldn’t be an issue. I took up most of my courses at community centres where the courses are super-cheap. I’m paying only $50 for 10 lessons for my yoga. That’s like what? $20 per month? Come on, a simple dinner with your family at a coffeeshop costs more! Think about it, your kid is not gonna love you less if you spend 1 night away from them to attend a class. Housework will never end and you can always do overtime another night. If you look back 20 years down the road, you won’t remember that on Tuesday, you cleaned the floor till it’s spotless but you will remember that you took ikebana classes before and that’s why the flowers in your house are now nicely arranged. Time passes by so fast nowadays. Wouldn’t it be nice to look back on the past year and realised that you have achieved something, instead of squandering the whole year away without any accomplishments?

I spent my childhood playing in playgrounds, my teenage life having fun with friends and dating a lot, and my twenties building up a life (marriage, parenthood, creating a home, studying etc.). Now that I’m in my thirties, I want my thirties to be the time that I do and learn whatever I want. I guess I’m partly influenced by my husband who’s the ‘King of Upgrading’. He has hundreds of certs and would always be the first to encourage me when I wanna learn something new (of cos’ based on the condition that he gets to attend the courses too). He just loves learning and that has influenced the lazy me to upgrade too. So now I become a believer of upgrading. I believe you should upgrade yourself not cos’ the government asked you to or cos’ you need the skills to land a job, but cos’ you wanna do it for yourself. Do it cos’ you want to pick up a new skill and cos’ it’s your interest. Learning is more fun that way.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Advertisement

2 Comments

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI