Juggling

Growing up, I was always intrigued by juggling. I would see a street performer's act, then try it out at home myself... and then fail, miserably. Since the majority of people I met couldn't juggle, I just assumed it was something very difficult and time-taking to learn.

In my second year of college, I had a roommate who knew how to juggle. One afternoon, he invited me to our school's juggling club to hang out. When I attended my first meeting, I was greeted by someone on a unicycle juggling bowling pins. The group was full of people having fun, and so I picked up a few juggling balls and tried to join in. The expert jugglers would come by casually to give me pointers, but then mostly went back to having fun with whatever weird thing they were working on.

Within a few weeks, I was keeping five juggling balls in the air at once. I was experimenting with odd-shaped objects and tossing back and forth with other friends. I didn't quite make it on a unicycle, and in the years since I graduated my skills have mostly deteriorated. But if there's oranges on the counter at home, I'll still absent-mindedly pick three up and start juggling mid-conversation.

What's interesting is not my ability to throw pieces of fruit in the air, but the contrast between my experience before and after learning how to juggle. Before learning, it seemed like a tremendously difficult skill. But the process of learning was so effortless that in a very brief amount of time, without much conscious effort, I learned how to juggle.

I try to remember this story when learning new skills now. While many important, complex skills certainly take time to learn, there are likely good and better ways to learn most things. And at the least, being in the right group must make a tremendous group. Juggling seemed to be a difficult task until I met a large group of people doing it effortlessly, which reset my expectations for how difficult it actually was.