The skill called shame (from when I learnt to dance)

When you're learning a technical skill like coding or design, people encourage you. But when you are trying to acquire performatory skills often perceived as innate, like me learning to dance ‘shaku-shaku’ in 2017, the response is ‘well-intentioned’ mockery.

This reaction comes from a deep-seated belief that some abilities simply can’t be learned. In recent Nigerian parlance, “if it didn’t dey, it didn’t dey”. So when you are trying, the observers, including your friends, rather feel embarrassed. They wouldn’t try to learn those things—like dancing, football, drawing, singing—and so why are you trying to force it?

But that leads us to the special, critical skill called shame, or being ‘shame-proof’. This is your ability to try to learn just anything—even when you’re ‘supposed’ to be born with it but you aren’t—while smiling through the mockery and forgiving them, for they know not what they do.

PS. Now I represent the groomsmen at wedding dance contests. But in 2017, you would have been embarrassed watching me try.