Trying To Be Better
November 2011
By Pat McManus
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Now that I’m retired, I’ve decided to become either a painter or a mathematician. My so-called friends get hysterical when they hear this, but I have plodded along anyway.
In college algebra, I did all right until we hit quadratic equations — that is when I lost it. For fifty years and more, I have been irritated that I flunked quadratic equations. So I picked up a couple of math books and learned how to do quadratic equations. They aren’t easy.
Once I had conquered them, I decided to turn my attention to becoming a painter. All my life, I’ve thought that being an artist was the best thing to be, but, alas, I’ve never had time to become one. Now that I am more or less retired, I decided at last to become a painter, which is what I had intended to become from about the age of five. So for the past six months, I have been working with watercolors.
Now here is the lesson I wish to convey. The most difficult part of becoming something different from what you already are is getting through the learning curve, when everything you attempt turns out to be terrible. I believe I’m just about through the terrible period of becoming a painter of watercolors. I’m not saying that my paintings are any good, mind you, but they’re just not terrible. It occurred to me that many people give up on their ambitions because they can’t bear being terrible at something, even for a while.
A friend of mine thinks I’m crazy for taking up something so difficult at my age. Ha! But here’s the thing. I think each person should try to be something more than he was the day before, and so on, day after day. If you read a book, you are something more than you were before you read it. If you try a new recipe, you become something more than before you tried it.
Just don’t mess with mathematics or watercolor painting, because they will drive you mad!
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Food for Thought... Here's something Dad used to tell me that always helped me hang in through the "terrible stage" of learning something new. "Everything is hard until you know how to do it." Peggy McManus