Here is a lecture delivered by Sabu Francis to a group of students. It explains how learning can be fun even though some may regard it as painful ...

When a baby learns to lift her head, she starts getting stimulated by the world around her. At first, her explorations are done with the mouth: Most of the things that come to her hand would first get tasted... a trying time for parents. Then, she starts leaping out to grab objects and learns to throw her body in the direction of the object. Somewhere down the line, she learns to lift herself up to get the required leverage to get to the object of her desire. This phase is painful for the baby: She starts falling down as soon as she starts getting up. This can be easily explained:

As soon as the body gets lifted to an upright position, the centre of gravity of the baby has a smaller base on which to balance. When there is even a slight shift towards any direction, this CG can easily go beyond the base of the body, and the baby topples. As we all know in physics, an object would be stable only if the plumb line from the CG is within the base of an object. The moment this plumb falls beyond the object's base, the object would have to expend energy to stop the toppling.

The curious thing is that after a few days the baby stops toppling. How does that happen? She learns to put a leg forward -- maybe by accident or by some deep rooted genetic mechanism that kicks into action due to the repeated toppling. The moment a leg flays out just as the body is toppling, the base of the object (err...the baby) increases, and the plumb line from the CG is again safely back within the base of the object and the baby stops toppling.

What is even curiouser is that the baby now starts exploiting this simple principle: Because the effective base has now increased and the body has got stabilized; she becomes more confident of reaching her goal -- which is to grab at the object of her desire. The leg that was put forward, effectively buttressing the fall, would have taken the baby physically closer to her goal, even if it was slight. She senses this movement and so she simply repeats the partial fall once again: The CG is deliberately shifted in the direction of the object, and again a leg is put forward to stop the falling.

We have a convenient term for that curious repetitive action: It is called walking.

As we grow up, whenever we walk we are in effect deliberately invoking a series of small falls which are interrupted at the last moment by our legs propping up the body before it falls. Somewhere down the line we forget that learning to walk involves falling. We forget that walking still involves falling. It always will. In fact, we forget to examine those simple happenings in the early part of our life and see if we use those lessons. But we've forgotten the lessons too:

All around, people tell you that mistakes are things to be avoided; something that would earn you negative marks. So let me now go over the steps required to walk once more.

Establish a goal
Imagine if the baby had not sighted an object. She would not have any requirement for moving towards it. So is the case with all learning. You must have something in your sights which you want to attain. Obviously, these things are not done independently. A baby would lean towards her favourite toy because she had earlier experienced the pleasure of using that toy. Similarly, a goal is not established independently: It comes because of our assesment of other goals which we had (or hadn't achieved) during that phase of our life.

Develop a desire
What is life without a passion? It is not sufficient to just establish a goal and then look at it dispassionately. Develop a desire that drives you deep from the heart. Unfortunately, the potential for embarassment is often a deterrent for developing a passion. Many get worried what their friends (peer group) would react.

When I was your age, I used to embarass everyone by exposing my passions. Actually, I did not understand it completely then. It is only today when I look back that I can safely state that I was doing something that was innocent -- something that was natural to any human being. I think now that it is because I overcame the fear of embarassment that today I participate in a wide variety of activities. I have seen too many talented people refusing to pursue their talents and refuse to develop skills into knowledge, fearing that they may be ridiculed.

The baby who has set her sight on a goal, and has developed a passion for it -- is scarcely aware of anyone who maybe laughing at her plight. She is not afraid. I have half a mind to think that the potential risk of being made fun of can drive a person to be focussed on a goal!

Invoke a fall
Just having a desire to attain a goal is not sufficient. You have to literally fall for it. Take a step towards it and let your body (and mind!) go. Obviously, there should be some scientific backing for justifying your fall. Expose yourself to as much knowledge as possible in that subject. Don't fall because it is the in thing to do!

Prop at the last moment
This is probably the last crucial thing that you need to do. It is important that you do it at the very last moment. If the baby had put out her leg anytime earlier than when she eventually did, she would have frozen into inaction.

We think that in our life we have to seek out equilibriums in our life. The truth is that without imbalance there can be no progress. When everything is at repose, we use a more convenient term; which is death. If we have to live, we have to agree to be in a state of inequilibrium. And that is a state which we must relish in, till the very last moment.

The leg comes in front of the body at the very last moment. It is done as an end-effect of a lot of turmoil that person goes through. When it is done in such a fashion -- i.e. at the last possible moment -- it is a sincere effect -- it is a compromise that was reached because nature demanded it to be so -- and the process by which the goal would be achieved will never become questionable.

As you go through your life, you may not be able to achieve all your goals that you were passionate about: My advice to you is not to dwell on such unachieved goals. If you had followed the above steps sincerely, and despite that if the goal was not achieved, it only means that you simply couldn't do that one thing in your life. There is still so much walking yet to be done!

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