The joy of being an ADULT BEGINNER

When was the last time you learnt an entirely new skill? Learning something new has a number of benefits that go way beyond the thing itself.

- LIESL ROBERTSON

AT the outset of the book Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning by Tom Vanderbilt, he writes about facing off against an opponent in a chess tournament. 'I peered at him with what I hoped looked like remorseless pity. I was trying to project as much feral menace as one could while sitting in a library chair.'

While Tom is sizing up his faceless nemesis, looking for chinks in his armour, his adversary seems unaware of his intense scrutiny, appearing faintly bored and glancing around the room. 'Could I, through tactical finesse, and the withering power of my merciless gaze, slowly dismantle the core of his being?' he wonders.

The next moment, a woman appears at his opponent's side, hands him a small carton of chocolate milk and plants a kiss on his head. Ryan, as it turns out, is 8 years old - and 'with admirable composure, and an occasional sniffle, he dispatched me somewhere after the thirtieth move'. Checkmate.

This little scene sets Tom up for what will be a common thread in Beginners: that we tend to think of learning as something reserved for the young. As the parent of a young girl, Tom started to notice a recurring theme at his daughter's extramural classes: while the kids were engaged and learning new concepts and skills, the parents stood on the sidelines, peering at their smartphones.

The phrase 'adult beginner', he says, 'has an air of gentle pity': 'It implies the learning of something that you should have perhaps already learned.' While kids are free to try out any number of activities (while we cheer them on, fail or flourish), we as adults are a lot more reluctant. We're afraid of looking and feeling foolish, so we hardly ever dare to try our hand at something new.