“You can't teach an old dog new tricks.”

Oh, yeah?

While this adage attempts to encapsulate the concept that old habits are well-ingrained, change-resistant behavior patterns, nevertheless, ol' Fido (animal or human) can learn something new up to the day he dies.

If, before you settled in to read this column, you read any other part of the paper today, you learned something. Information was imparted and your brain changed.

This isn't a value discussion. We're not talking about how much you learned, or what you learned, just that you did learn. Dendritic connections were made between neurons in your brain. Others may have been destroyed (as you corrected facts or beliefs), or some may have been reinforced. Either way, you changed, and that's what we call learning.

Learning isn't just the process of cramming academic information into your cranium. Learning can be new realizations, like how much wiser some younger people seem to be than you were at their age. (If you've been a parent of teenagers and young adults, that realization has been thrust upon you whether it's accurate or not!) Learning can be new perceptions, like how much colder you seemed to feel this winter despite its relative mildness.

Learning can be the development of a new hobby or skill. Learning can be as simple as finding a new way to drive to your favorite vacation spot. If you decide the extra exposure to mosquitoes made that new way less pleasant, that's learning, too.

So it really isn't a question of whether the ol' dog will learn new tricks. It is a question of whether or not he wants to learn new tricks.

Motivation to learn resides in all of us, but our perspective on life can dictate how much motivation we have to give to the process. Watch an infant learn to walk. He will fail time after time, but he picks himself up to try again. He might make hundreds of mistakes, falling each time. He isn't so worried about social reactions. He learns from his mistakes, refines that which his body is doing and eventually masters the skill.

As we age, we often let our social awareness dictate to us the value of picking ourselves up and trying again. Mockery, scorn and other persecutions may make the avoidance of embarrassment a stronger motivation than any reward for mastery of a new skill.

Poor self-esteem also plays a role in whether we tackle something new, and how we feel about ourselves when we inevitably fail to be perfect right away. Poor self-esteem depletes motivation in a hurry.

At these times, we may be learning how little we are willing to sacrifice in order to learn a new skill. We may be learning how much more important it is to us to maintain our social status quo. But we are still learning.

Now. You have a decision to make: what will you do with what you just learned? Will you take up a new hobby or develop a new skill? Will you take a class at the community college? I hope so. I'll take up that topic next week.

Grace MacDowell, M.A., of Auburn, is completing her doctorate in clinical psychology. She can be reached at drmac2be@yahoo.com