How at 6 I learned the gift of teaching, without going to school. We need to be uncomfortable, learn to fail big and discard the paths that lead to resistance.
In a 2017 TED TALK, the King of Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan spoke on ‘Thoughts on humanity, fame, and love’. There was a part of the talk that resonated with me at a deep human and spiritual level.
“And I was only 14 then, and I put my father’s dead body in the back seat of the car, and my mother beside me, I started driving back from the hospital to the house. And in the middle of her quiet crying, my mother looked at me and she said, “Son, when did you learn to drive?” And I thought about it and realized, and I said to my mom, “Just now, Mom.” So from that night onward, much akin to humanity in its adolescence, I learned the crude tools of survival”
We are so much more than our professional experiences, college degrees, work titles, and bank balances. It is the survival instinct to live through any adversity that builds character. And that character can train you to learn any skill.
When I was 6, we lived in Ladakh (a small town located in the Himalayas in Kashmir, India) where we had very few schools. I lived in an army cantonment with basic and limited infrastructure. My mom was requested by the local families to teach alphabet and numbers to their kids because they couldn’t afford to go to school. Also, being close to the LOC, which is the Line of control, it was not safe for them to go to school alone by hiking the high mountains every morning. There was always the fear of war, the fear of survival.
My mom was studying for her distant MBA at the time and she did start teaching them, but couldn’t continue for long. It still surprises me but I started teaching the kids alphabet and number, I used MS PowerPoint to create presentations. The objects, letters, and pictures would come flying and a lady would say aloud each letter to spell the word, then we would talk about how to use it in the sentence. I actually just graduated from those skills 20 years later, when I used PowerPoint for work. Thank God!
That’s when I learned MS Excel too. I taught them simple math tables, subtraction, and addition and I had even learned to color code to make the monotonous MS Excel interesting. I learned how to drag formulas to save me the effort. Wow, finding easy ways, quite efficient I was. And of course, I taught them how to play games on my computer. These kids had never seen a computer before, and I guess computers were so new at the time anyway. That computer was my life though. If you are wondering what was I doing at the time in terms of schooling, the answer is, nothing much. Being an Army BRAT (Born-Raised-And-Transferred) was fun but had its own challenges, which later on impacted my school admissions in New Delhi (after Ladakh we were transferred to the capital of India), but you know what, I turned out just fine.
So I would read books that my grandma sent us, educate my 3 local buddies and encourage them to be something when they grew up. I do remember their names (Chitan, Puja, and Shanu). The best part is I learned a lot from them in return. We would float in the stream in front of our house, go and look for toys in the garbage. I had all the toys I needed, but there was a different excitement in finding a doll face separated from her body or a truck with only three wheels. I learned how to plant trees, and I also learned if you plant one near a big tree, it has a bigger chances of surviving. I learned not only to climb the trees but also how to use garden tents to create slides. We had our own little world in the wilderness.
What I have learned from my own story is that humans have a tendency to learn anything at any time. Whenever there is a motivation to learn, which may be need-based, fear-based or simply based on the aspiration to progress, we can adapt and do whatever we want. Most of our skills build from challenging experiences.We need to be uncomfortable, learn to fail big and discard the paths that lead to resistance.
I hesitated to talk in English till I was 16, but at 19 I was coaching group classes to adults as an Internationally Certified instructor, as a hobby. I worked a bank in the US for two years before joining a start-up as a third employee where these skills are coming handy. I do stand-up comedy, acting, and podcasts- for fun!
I look back and see a pattern; whenever I was challenged, I decided to get out of my comfort zone. When there was the need to survive I adapted myself and I will continue to do that. Skills can be learned at any time, so don’t hesitate to be impulsive enough to try something new and scary.
I challenge my readers to think about the times they learned something from an adverse situation, find their patterns and realize how they can be their own heroes.
