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Saturday, July 5, 2025

Lessons learned along the way

by

20131228

A few years ago, in the pres­ence of my daugh­ter I was seek­ing coun­sel from my fa­ther over some vex­ing dilem­ma. I must have been go­ing round in cir­cles, be­cause my fa­ther stopped me and asked what I should have known was a lead­ing ques­tion: "Dol­ly," he said, us­ing a child­hood nick­name, "haven't you learned any­thing all these years?"I fell right in­to the trap when I said: "No, no. I'm the same since I was 18."Bad move. Both my fa­ther and teenage daugh­ter looked at me like I had stunt­ed my own growth.

"What?" asked my fa­ther. "Time, study, work, ex­pe­ri­ence, books, trav­el, friend­ships, fam­i­ly, re­la­tion­ships have taught you noth­ing new?"I an­swered as truth­ful­ly as I could: "No."My fa­ther dropped the sub­ject, but my daugh­ter didn't. Over months and years, she said: "Ba­ba was shocked you've learned noth­ing. Why did you learn noth­ing?"

I had to bear this on­slaught till she for­got about it. So this year, I looked at the ques­tion again. I an­swered truth­ful­ly to my­self. Of course I changed. Life had bat­tered me down like it's done to every­one else. I was in de­nial. I was un­will­ing to let go of the mem­o­ry of be­ing 18: ex­u­ber­ance, end­less pos­si­bil­i­ty, burn­ing cu­rios­i­ty, will­ing­ness to take big leaps, risks that leave you bruised or fly­ing but nev­er stag­nant; fear­less­ness, test­ing bound­aries, ad­ven­ture, a full laugh­ter. It is all there, but some­times buried.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers


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