At each point in my life, I have found myself spending it on the acquisition of knowledge or a certain skill.

Some were reluctantly assimilated when my parents threw me inside pre-school in my diapers and then primary school for formal education when I would probably have preferred to stay home and play in the red-coloured sandy area of my childhood haunts.

Now I thank them for gritting their teeth as painful as it might have been and not paying heed to my wheedling cry to escape learning my alphabets.

Imbibing knowledge is second nature to man. Learning is both formal and informally through social interactions and in my opinion, learning for me is ad infinitum.

You are never too old to learn new stuff and yours truly here has a lengthy quest to pursue, but now I’m doing my pursuits with some pragmatic sense and not running after every learning fad that catches my fancy like my younger days.

Ruling out the different fancy classes my mother enrolled me in, in a bid to make a lady out of her formerly gangly daughter; piano classes, dressmaking, crocheting, knitting, music lessons – not that I could carry a good tune or play the violin but I managed to play the flute decently – to baking, cooking and whatever was in vogue, thankfully we didn’t have ballet back in my town otherwise I probably would have been made to stand on my toes and possibly break them in the process, I’ve pursued quite some learning routes myself.

Some of them turned out successful and some were almost a disaster for me and the tutor.

I’m bilingual. After spending close to five years learning French, I fancied myself becoming a Polyglot so I embarked on learning German and Spanish.

I doubt if I ever crossed the threshold of ‘Guten Morgen‘ to the German teacher’s dismay and the dismay of my pocket. I think my tongue was not thick enough for the language and it didn’t quite sound as romantic as the nasal French which seemed to suit my tongue far better.

My Spanish has been sporadic in learning but I managed to progress beyond ‘Cómo estás to ‘me llamo Jacqueline‘ and at least I had the good sense not to spend too much just in case the desire died a quick death.

I fancied finding myself becoming a Taekwondo Maestro or is it Maestra, and I can’t tell you it ended well.

I nearly succeeded in killing the instructor and myself and that put paid to such ambition. I nursed my painful thighs for weeks and I guess he nursed some part of his bruised parts that was inadvertently caught in my not too stellar attempts.

I’m sure he was glad when I didn’t renew the fees for another session.

Not that I’ve given up hope on being nimble and flipping in the air in a chopstick, but I’m thinking that yoga is safer for now – at least I can get to sneak in a snooze on the mat and at least use a DVD and not have to spend scarce funds for now.

However, I still have some learning ideas that I’m toying with…

After all, learning is a continuous process. It’s ad infinitum

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha

Learning, Discovery Challenge

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