Beginner Bliss

You might assume you’ve got life figured out by now (sounds nice, right?), but there are tons of positives to starting at zero. Embrace fresh pursuits and you’ll be a happier person all around. Your primer.

- By Aryelle Siclait

During my first tennis lesson, at age 25, I shut my eyes and used my racket as a shield from the ball. By the second session, I’d improved my follow-through a bit, remembering to pivot my body with each swing, though I still sent the ball soaring, sometimes over the court’s enclosure and onto the nearby street. By the third, I realized tennis wasn’t my strong suit and probably never would be. The thing is, I don’t really care. While the 11-year-old one court over sends the ball volleying to her tennis pro with ease, I’m content simply being a beginner again.

I’ll admit this perspective is a new one, born of necessity and boredom. Recently, like many people, I had to confront the reality that other than helping crowd a restaurant and dancing at the occasional concert, I was short on pastimes. A stark difference from my younger years, when adding a new activity to the rotation was like a badge of honor, and my schedule was overrun with sports and language lessons.

This gap between the glory of newbie life and adulting is not entirely my fault. We’re conditioned to think that by our 20s, we should be prioritizing the skills that most benefit us professionally— which renders everything else extra, according to Sharon M. Ravitch, Ph.D., a professor of practice at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. This, she says, is a product of “grind culture.” In other words, when we join the workforce, our identities are rooted in what we do for a living. Suddenly, long hours and skipping lunch for a last-minute meeting is equated with success. As a result, making time to learn simply for the personal reward it brings is devalued, overshadowed by packed work schedules, parenting responsibilities, and the like.