I don't know how to kiss... YET!
Photo - Toa Heftiba
By Kerryn Vaughan
12th December 2019
Have you ever stopped to consider how often you say “I don’t know how to…”? Very often, I suspect! What if we changed that language to “I don’t know how to… yet”?
Think about all the things you competently do today that you once didn’t know how to do, like drive, tie your shoe laces, use the lawn mower, cook, kiss, use a smart phone; the list goes on and on…
What about using a computer? I can clearly recall how scared most of us were when personal computers first became available. I was in my late 20’s. I remember seeing these clunky big things starting to appear in shops and for well over a year I would feel a sense of dread at the thought of someday being in a position where I would be forced to use one. I was terrified! Computers were way too advanced for someone like me.
Around the age of 30 I took the leap (only because my then partner wanted one) and we bought a desk computer with the giant hard-case and massive big box screen that left absolutely no room on the desk for anything else. You couldn’t even move it without ‘setting the heads in park’. Yes, I thought I was so advanced in IT knowing that little secret and mastering it. I also remember spending what seemed like a house deposit on it!
Fast forward 25 years and I’m practically married to my Mac (others in my home call her Mrs Mac due to my perhaps ‘over-the-top’ adoration) and I can’t ever imagine how I was afraid of these amazing machines.
When I first invested in a little farm some 12 years ago, I didn’t know how to do any farm maintenance. Well I can tell you, I soon had to get my act together! I still have a small farm now, and over those years I’ve constructed paddock shelters, rebuilt an outdoor toilet, re-strung a clothesline, fixed many water pumps and connections, re-wired a solar system, installed electric fences, injected sick cows, and so many other things I’d never had to do prior to this. Only a couple of weeks ago I had to herd a snake into a corner to confine it, after it made its way into the house via the doggy door!
Photo - Timothy Eberly
This got me thinking - isn’t it funny how when things are urgent (and a snake in the house falls under ‘critically urgent’!), we seem to find a way to learn in an instant. There is no ‘yet’ and there is no ‘can’t’. Adrenaline kicks in, we do what we have to, and in most cases actually succeed, much to our surprise.
We never give ourselves enough credit for what we are truly capable of. Besides, every single thing you could ever want to learn is now on YouTube, so no excuses!
So why is it, we allow what we can’t do to define us? What if we did started putting ‘yet’ on the end of every ‘I don’t know how to…’? Imagine how we’d start seeing ourselves and our capabilities.
However, if you really don't like something, and don’t ever want to do it, then by all means ignore all of the above. I'm not good at sewing, because I actually despise sewing. So, I don't want to be good at it ‘yet’, now, or any other time.
But if you are saying things like ‘I'm not good at this’ or ‘I don't know how to do that’, it probably means that you wish you were good at it or did know how to do it, otherwise you wouldn't even be bringing it up. So my advice, make friends with the word ‘yet’ and use it often . Oh, and for the record, I had a whole lot of fun learning how to kiss!
Kerryn Vaughan is the author of ‘Magnificent Kids!’ and ‘Get Off The Bench!’, founder of One Planet Classrooms, and co-founder of Girls With Hammers.