MLOs (Missed Learning Opportunities)

How Many Teachers Have You Ignored?

Is it just me, or do most of us have a past filled with lost learning opportunities? Times when we knew someone or were close to someone who could have taught us something interesting, useful, or valuable, and we just missed the boat. I guess I’m ready to admit my abject failure at taking advantage of some of these MLOs in my own life, or I wouldn’t have started this post.

I suppose one of the first such missed opportunities was learning to play a musical instrument. I don’t play any, and my father played at least six. Before he married my mother, he was a member of the famous Ferko String Band appearing in the annual Philadelphia New Year’s Mummer’s Parade, where his instrument was the banjo. He also played the banjo mandolin, accordion, guitar, harmonica, and ukulele.  He tried to teach me the guitar, but it hurt my very young fingertips and I gave up quickly. I imagine a psychologist would have a field day exploring what that said about my relationship with my father and how it affected my future life.

My grandmother spoke Russian and I could have easily learned the language in childhood, but I didn’t and to this day only speak English. I’ve talked about my 12 years in prison, but not about the fact that it would have been a great opportunity to learn Spanish from Mexican or Cuban fellow inmates. But other than a few curses, I didn’t.

Back in the mid-1990s, I lived in a commune not far from Silicon Valley and one of my housemates was a young man who wrote articles for WIRED magazine, reviewing new software. He was an expert at surfing the Internet before most people even knew it existed, and offered to guide me through its intricacies and secrets–and I wasn’t interested.

One of the great loves of my life was a yoga teacher, and I never learned a single posture. I had a French girlfriend for a year, but never learned any French (mainly because she was fluent in English and didn’t like speaking her native language outside France). I could go on and on. Considering this, it is amazing how many different things I actually have learned over the years. Looking back, I am sorry I didn’t take the time to benefit from all this additional available knowledge. I suppose this just confirms all the research that says that at the end of a life, we don’t regret what we did, but what we didn’t do.

There’s Still Time

So here’s my point: unless you are fading and faltering and on your last legs, you still have lots of time to learn lots of things. You could start by going back and making a list of perhaps 10 Things I Could Have Learned, or 10 Of My Missed Learning Opportunities. And then pick out one you are willing and able to learn at this point in your life. Another one for me is from my life just after high school, when I attended The American Foundation of Dramatic Arts. I took a one year program in radio and television broadcasting. They also had some classes on improvisation, a relatively new art form at the time. I was fascinated when I saw the students having so much fun in class, but still having a lot of my childhood shyness remaining, I did not take the risk to explore improvisation. 2012 looks like a good year to remedy that, and I am checking out some improv classes in San Francisco.

This goes to something I have long maintained, that there is no such thing as a missed opportunity, merely a delayed one.

Jerry