It happens sometimes, that in our practice, we arrive at ‘a-ha’ moments. Such moments, upon our initial fascination, and upon closer inspection, turn out to be particularly resembling common wisdom. They often belong to the realm of general knowledge.

I have an example in my recent experience, while learning a useless trick of spinning a pen around my thumb. I started by trying a couple of times and failing. Watched gifs and videos and read tutorials. Next time, about ten minutes into practice, failure after failure — I still didn’t learn the trick. But something happened. I had my first aha moment: I realized that I was sending the pen on a wrong trajectory. It was far from the first signs of success. But that was a step ahead. That revelation would not have been possible without the initial practice. Multiple repetitions, without putting any thought into what I was doing, without losing the motivation — that was what got me to that first step on a learning ladder. I wasn’t succeeding, but I was learning something. That’s what kids are good at. And that’s, probably, something that we call “an inner child”, that center of curiosity and readiness to fail, without turning away from the task.

This particular “insight” that I had can be translated into a common-knowledge phrase “practice makes perfect.” So simple, so familiar. But it feels completely different when you arrive at this from your own experience, as something you felt rather than something you overheard. Something that you thought rather than something that you agreed with. And this is what helps us grow. Even if in a questionably useful task of pen spinning.