You’ve got to be willing to be a fool

This week I decided that I wanted to finish the book Mastery by George Leonard, so I read the epilogue.  After reading the entire book, I felt like the epilogue stood out to me the most.  The answer to the mountain man’s question, “How can I be a learner?” and the response, “It’s simple.  To be a learner, you’ve got to be willing to be a fool,” made perfect sense to me.  My family and I had the privilege of visiting both Salzburg and Vienna last week.  Both locations were areas I had lived and served as a LDS missionary about 14 years ago.  My mind couldn’t help but think about the difficult, but wonderful times I experienced there.  I remember how difficult the language was for me and how long it took to become a master of the German language.  Pride and my unwillingness to feel embarrassment was a major setback for me.  My progress in the language didn’t come until I became “foolish”.  I remember being so concerned about saying everything grammatically correct and without accent, that if I felt like I couldn’t accomplish both of these, I wouldn’t say anything at all.  Maybe said in a different way, becoming a fool is a willingness to make mistakes despite embarrassment.  First, I hope that as I age, I will maintain and even increase my desire to be a learner.  Second, I hope that my fear of embarrassment or public ridicule will not upset my progress on the path of mastery.