Getting older? You’ll gain more from a new skill than from knowledge. What I’m trying

For years we had a running joke in my family. My husband and sons are all terrific tennis players, and they urged me, year after year, to learn. The boys were on Boise High’s championship team, and my husband played from the time he was a kid.

Now that he’s retired, he plays almost daily, sometimes more than once. And they’ve wanted me to play, since our sons were small. So every 15 years, I’d take lessons for a couple of days and then quit.

“I’m a better cheerleader than player,” I’d say. They’d chuckle and we waited for another 15 years to pass.

For some reason, this year, 2021, at the beginning of June, I decided to try again. But my thinking was different this time.

“I’ll give it a month, not just two days,” I said. My husband rolled his eyes but at least didn’t laugh out loud.

Then I got busy. I took lessons a couple of times a week, including from a left-handed player (which I am and I gather, in tennis, that’s a small advantage). I worked with the ball machine, hitting 100 forehands and 100 backhands in the early morning, when no one was around. I watched tennis: Wimbledon started in June, so that was a serendipitous piece of luck.

But most of all, I approached the whole venture as a complete beginner, which I am. Since I never learned to play, I have no bad habits to break. Since I know I’ll never be able to compete with my family, I have no pressure. Since I’m doing it for me, not because they wanted me to, I can make it whatever I want, a way to move a little, beat out frustrations by hitting hard, or just time for myself.

Then I remembered a book I read earlier in the year, and it all fit together. Tom Vanderbilt’s “Beginners” argues that as we age we need to learn new skills. Not just new knowledge, which those of us who spend time at a computer probably do all the time. No, says Vanderbilt, a new skill — which could be chess, surfing, skiing, or even tennis — gives us the chance to start from the beginning and learn like a child. If we can remove expectations about how we “should” perform, even better.

Let me tell you, it’s exhilarating being a kid again. Being trained on something I thought I knew about (watching those many years of tennis games) has opened my eyes to learning in new ways, which is one of life’s great joys to me.

I’m also loving the idea that, slowly, I can see improvement. I can hit more balls over the net than into the net, at least against the very kind and consistent ball machine.

I think I’ll give it one more month.

Nancy Napier is a Boise State University distinguished professor. nnapier@boisestate.edu. She is co-author of “The Bridge Generation of Vietnam: Spanning Wartime to Boomtime.”