What adult learning taught me

I don’t know what triggered the decision, but at the age of 39, I bought a guitar online and decided I was going to learn to play. Music has always been a kind of wonderful alchemy to me. With no formal education in the subject, I had kind of accepted that it was to remain an inaccessible magic, forever to be admired but not understood. Embracing my newfound spontaneity, I jumped into learning via YouTube tutorials, but soon hit walls I couldn’t scale (!) on my own.

So, I found a music school near me and can honestly say that my first in-person lesson was one of the most painful 30 minutes I’ve experienced in my adult life. A fumbling, stumbling, awkward confession of my deepest, darkest desire. It’s not like learning a craft or pursuing a new academic interest. It feels childish to have a dream of playing an instrument – especially guitar – like I want to be a 40-year-old rockstar? Grow up. I’m deeply embarrassed by myself at the best of times and have managed to navigate adulthood by being good at things. I’ve taken care to curate a persona that says, “I’m a serious, adult human, just like you.” Except... I do want to be a 40-year-old rockstar. I just never admitted it.

One year in, and I still want to just dissolve sometimes. I’m happy to be clumsy, persistently incorrect, and slow to progress in the privacy of my own home, but to do it in front of another adult (a younger adult at that, a musician adult who has all the confidence of having spent his life in musically creative circles, now faced with this rambling, nervously giggling flop)… bury me. Bury me deep. But that feeling gets rarer week by week. And I’m noticeably improving in skill, confidence, and pride swallowing.

We talk a lot about “stepping out of our comfort zone,” particularly in professional circles. We’re always “expanding our skillset” and “embracing new challenges,” but honestly, how often do we open ourselves up to this kind of vulnerability? Being an adult learner has been a lesson in humility and trust. It is an emotionally painful and brutally honest journey, but mostly I have learned that I’m not done yet. I finished my formal education 20 years ago, but I’m not done with learning. It leaves me optimistic about the path my future could take, that the possible forks in the road are no longer dictated by the decisions I made when I had no real understanding of who I am. Hello, Wembley…