Learning to Learn

“In the groove” is a common statement often heard from a wide variety of professional athletes. They speak of how the game around them has slowed down, and how they are seeing the ball or the entire field more clearly than ever before.

A golfer remarks about how comfortable he or she feels while addressing the ball. The same golfer finds himself or herself on a streak when everything he or she attempts to do works out perfectly.

Then there’s the basketball player who describes the basket as appearing twice the normal size. Every shot he throws up goes in. The guy announcing the game says how the player appears to be “in a zone.”

All the old-timers agree, when skill and experience are coupled with an exceptional work ethic, one day the unusual slowdown will occur. The batter will see the ball better, the golfer becomes relaxed and comfortable, our basketball player sinks a three pointer to win the game.

It was probably around age fifty. A time when things in general began to slow down, appearing to all those within my spectrum, as if I was a guy who might know what he was doing. Without knowing or feeling a transition, the ten-thousand hours of toiling away at my craft were beginning to take a firm hold.

Was it others or I? Inside, the same drums continued to beat out a rhythm as background for the same word, “Learn, learn, and learn.” I may have been fifty years of age, but I was in many ways still the little kid tuned in to his dad asking him with religious fervor, “What did you learn today?” The ever-present upper right side of my grammar school report card, visibly tolling out the score of “Could do better.” The report card thing has never left me. I guess it never will.

Exactly when it happened will always remain my unanswered query; one day my personal signature became self-acknowledged. When people around me began to comment about how comfortable I appeared to be.

My life, from it’s earliest stages, was dedicated to the totally agreed upon premise of the greatest philosophers the world has known:

“Wisdom is a blessing only to those prepared to absorb it.”

When learning becomes wisdom, and one’s dedication is an absolute and resolute way of life, it then becomes possible for each of us as human beings to experience being in a so-called “zone.” When we are questioned and give answers while displaying a demeanor of total confidence.

Most of us, regardless of the field of endeavor we may choose, are striving to become the best we can be. Rarely, however, will a student declare their desire to get into a zone. The subject never comes up, because in life’s earliest stages, comfort zones have not yet been cultivated.

The academic world provides many of our needed tools. But the desire to reach one’s goals while playing through the pain of real life experiences can’t be derived from a book. In almost every walk of life, success and endurance go hand-in-hand. A kid graduates at the top of his class, and immediately faces up to the question, “What do I do now?” In the business world, the answer is gaining some experience. And be prepared to start at the bottom.

In our entertainment world, staying in the game, enduring, and continuing an uninterrupted study of one’s chosen craft, are all must have parameters for success; yet these same parameters will never guarantee your goals and aspirations will ever be met.

May I dutifully present the following life’s experiences, to hopefully serve as a helping hand to whomever there is out there in need of encouragement?

His and Hers

EXPERIENCE: 10,000 HOURS APPLIED, serving as the catalyst for the two of us to join hands and together begin the process of building:

Kalmenson & Kalmenson: The business of voice casting and education.

Catherine and I agreed:

“If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately. I love the man (and woman) that can smile in trouble that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
-Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, December 19, 1776

Our company’s goals are to always provide for our patrons the ability to share in the wisdom we have both gained during our years of dedication to our craft.

Learning will remain our theme. Cultivating our learning into the wisdom we may pass on to our students and clients will remain the driving force behind the constant passage of integrity behind all we endeavor.

The last eighteen years of business have enabled each of us, Cathy and da harv, some thirty six thousand hours, in order to turn some of what we have learned, into the wisdom we endeavor to pass on.

“Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune.”

“Wisdom will not support ignorance.”