Learn Freehand Skills During Social Distancing
I have long believed that everyone should learn some unusual skill, if not a few, in order to learn how to find joy in arbitrariness. There should be no “reason” to be good at anything other than enjoying the thing, especially if it is on the verge of being difficult but possible – far enough beyond your ability that if you get strong enough you can do it.
From 2008 to 2010, I was a Peace Corps volunteer, and like many other volunteers, I was left alone for long periods of time, disconnected from friends and family except through an Internet connection. It was the practice of today’s social distancing before COVID-19 taught us that phrase, and one of my little pleasures came from teaching a frivolous skill: I learned to juggle.
We’ve already talked about how to teach yourself to juggle , and while professional instruction in learning a new skill can make it easier to master the skill, keep in mind that part of learning something free doesn’t require learning it in the “right way.” … Freedom is to learn something in your own way and in accordance with your standards. Mine, for example, was to just keep the balloons in the air for one minute. No judgment, no proper form, no instruction; if I held three balls in the air for one minute, I did it . It was a feeling that I had forgotten since childhood, my inherent curiosity and subsequent discoveries. Can I do it? I bet I could.
Of course, there are advantages to performing arbitrary tricks and tasks that unexpectedly combine with the experience gained – imagine studying a minesweeper, billiards, Morse code, shuffling cards, spinning a yo-yo, solving a Rubik’s cube, or operating a gear lever without the added advantage. coordination, concentration, perseverance, or just being a more interesting person – but these results are side effects, not a goal. Learning a new skill is about remembering how you learn – a skill set that is often forgotten as we get older – and the fun that comes with the process.
My months of social isolation ended with a new skill that I love to this day. I still pick oranges from time to time and keep them afloat just for pure pleasure, to see if I can still. (And I can still non-stop, for much longer than a minute.) For those of us in social isolation, finding a “useless skill” can repair the muscles we had as children. Pick a skill and master it in your own way. Remind yourself that you can learn on your own, that you have taught yourself something before, that you can teach yourself again. Do you think you can do it? I bet you could.