| Dear Solitary Reader: x-Axis: Tom Petty has a song out there called Learnin’ to Fly. Tom is obviously more accomplished than I am as he is learning to fly (and he don’t have wings) while I have only recently started learning to swim. |
Way back in the day, growing up a young buck in the wilds of Newfoundland, my father, it seems, never cared enough about me to throw me in the water so I could learn to swim. Thanks for that dad (and the temper too). It’s a little known fact the entire reason I had to leave Newfoundland was because I was voted off once it got out I couldn’t swim.
It was a sad affair, I recall it well.
I’d just been voted the King in Waiting of Newfoundland and was going to lead the people in a separatist movement, freeing ourselves from the tyranny of Canada; when a member of SPY’s R’ US, Canada’s secret service agency and predecessor of CSIS, got hold of the fact I couldn’t swim and that was the end of my political career. Once the people of Newfoundland realized I was aqua-challenged they shipped me off as far away as they could. But my faithful remain and they await my return… true story.
At any rate, my lack of ability when it comes to the duck pond hadn’t really given me much grief throughout my life; at least not until lately.
y-Axis: I didn’t go to university like most folk. Conventionally people tend to go for a couple of semesters and take a break in the summer. But not me. Nay, your hero instead went to university for 21 semesters straight – in pirate speak that’s seven yar.
Five years of that was taking my English Degree and you can thank the folks at MUN for the literature you read right now, without their guidance I’d be stuck writing for CNN, not the intellectual treat you currently read. The remainder of my university term was me getting an MBA so I’d have a useful degree.
Go on and ask me how that turned out.
By the time I finished university I knew two things: 1) I now knew enough to be a good king in waiting and 2) I was done learning.
I made a vow to stop learning.
Intersection: During the recent trip to Maui (that’s right the one in Hawaii) I watched my four year old boy grow from a tad pole into a frog (he got better); he went from a boy who wasn’t quite comfortable in the water to a little guy having so much fun you had to drag him out. The difference? Water wings. Those puffed up little bags of air gave him the confidence to kick and play in the water such as I hadn’t seen before.
Not so much me. I was sitting in about 4 feet of water breathing a little fast because I was nervous. Now sure, I could get my own water wings but how would that look – a 35 year old man with a little ducky on each arm? Pretty funny I’d bet – but the sort of funny where I’d be the laughee as opposed to the laugher. No thank you for that.
Two things occurred to me, hanging out in the pool in Maui:
1) I was getting progressively nervous in the water, to the point where I could tell I wouldn’t be getting back in for a long time if I kept going this way, and;
2) if my boy had an accident in the water and no one was around but me – what would I be able to do but drag him down?
It was decided. I needed to learn how to swim.
But I couldn’t. For you see, I’d made a vow. A vow to stop learning.
I realized at that point just how stupid a vow to stop learning is: I’ve learned things accidentally for years, I’ve even learned a few things on purpose (like my job – and I’ve taken courses for that job where I’ve begrudgingly learned things). And frankly, every day as a parent to a 4 year old and a soon to be 21 month old I learn something (either a) I learn patience or b) I learn I need more patience).
So now I am once again learning to learn. I’m starting off with swimming, on the grounds that when I go back to Newfoundland I can take up my position as King in Waiting and take up the separatist movement again; but what to learn next?
I think blacksmithing
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