Our attention span is sometimes shorter than we or especially other’s may like. When our eyes start closing while another is talking to us about a problem they are having, that is a fairly obvious piece of evidence to them that we are not too sympathetic to their problem or interests. We essentially convict ourselves of having been bored. Yet, it may have been a serious concern for them, and they were seeking our sage like advice. My wife knows me only too well, bless her soul. Before she even starts to tell me something she will say, “Now Listen to this!” She will then look in my eyes to make sure she has gotten my attention. I believe that she thinks I will cut her off by telling her that I already know that. There is a Native American saying: “Listen, for your tongue makes you deaf.” I know that I am sometimes, too quick, to stop people trying to tell me something, not really wanting to hear the story or event over. At the same time I am aware of the rudeness of doing so. My tongue, too often, makes me deaf. The other aspect of human nature is impatience with the learning process. We don’t want to spend the hour and a half it takes to listen to the tape or to watch the video, we want to do something else, to be entertained. We don’t want to travel to the place where the teacher is instructing on the thing we would like to know, we don’t want to listen for an hour or so about a subject we already know something about. We just want to be experts without obtaining the expertise.
When I first decided that I wanted to learn how to oil paint and was tired of painting over uninspired and amateurish paintings I had started. I decided to take painting lessons from an instructor at the local university. He was so good, that I was embarrassed to be sitting in the same classroom. I quit, discouraged and almost gave up but rather I went back home and struggled trying to copy pictures from magazines and wherever I felt like I could replicate for an interesting picture. I finally got to the point where I could replicate certain scenes and even people. Still without any particular personal technique identified as my own. I left off painting to finish my formal education and never got back to it until I was in my eighties. Still frustrated without a technique that worked well for me. Without that technique, it seemed each painting was done differently. I started forcing myself to watch some of the experts, and I finally believe I am learning a few techniques that will make my painting life a little easier and more enjoyable. “Now listen to this!” The importance of ceasing my bull headedness and starting to listen to the experts, I believe, is finally going to start helping me. It doesn’t mean that I will end up being exactly like another painter. Even those who copy will still and always be different. That is why those who copy the famous paintings can always be detected by experts who have trained eyes to know that the way the original artist held his brush would or would not make certain strokes on a canvass.
No one will ever be concerned about how I may stroke a canvas, I only hope that I can finally paint a few pictures that are colorful, meaningful and fairly well done so that my children will like them and want to hang them on their walls and proudly say, “My dad or grandfather painted that.”