I have always loved learning.
When I was four, my family lived right across the street from the red-roofed elementary school where I watched my brother get swallowed by the white doors every morning. I couldn’t understand why he got to go to kindergarten and I didn’t. Who cared about being five? They should let anybody in who wanted to learn!
I made my brother teach me what he’d learned as soon as he came back home. So I learned to read right alongside him—and oh, what a world I discovered when I picked up books!
My love of learning continued all through middle school and high school. I set my sights on college—because I didn’t want to stop learning. And even though I did not come from a family of college graduates or even a family that could afford college, I worked hard for that dream.
An even bigger world opened up for me in college. I’d grown up in a small town. College exposed me to different people and different viewpoints and the amazing (and sometimes scary) reality that I hardly knew anything—and nothing for certain.
It was both a humbling and an exciting revelation. Humbling because it’s always a little jarring when you’re faced with how little you actually know. And exciting because it meant I could forge within myself a space for constant growth and learning. I could entertain my wonder. I could explore my uncertainties.
Maybe we don’t always like asking questions out loud, where people can hear, where our ignorance feels like it’s on display. People aren’t always kind and patient with our questions. Sometimes it feels like we live in a world where everybody knows the for-sure answer except for us.
But a question I’ve always asked myself is, What if there are no for-sure answers? And another: What if those of us who pretend to be so certain (and make no mistake—I pretend sometimes, too) are really some of the most uncertain people among us?
Can we know anything for certain?
I’m not talking about our convictions, where we take a hard stance and are unwilling to compromise. My 14-year-old pointed out one of mine the other day. He said, “You know, you’re really open-minded about a lot of things, but when it comes to food and healthy eating, you’re, like, unbendable.”
I made some joke and then followed it up with something like, “I’m unbendable because it’s one of the things that are important to me. Like climate change. And women’s rights. And a lot of other social issues.”
It’s good to have those convictions and hard stances. But even within those, we have to be willing to learn more. I have rigid rules about the food in our house being healthy and mostly plants. It doesn’t mean I’m not open to hearing new information about nutrition. In fact, I actively seek out new information and have since I studied nutrition in college. Science changes. I change with it when I need to.
Being rigid about our convictions doesn’t have to mean we’re closed-minded.
When we remain open-minded, we allow ourselves to consider and accept new information. We seek to clarify. We ask important questions without fear. We wonder. And along the way, we learn that the more we learn the less we actually know.
Which is why it’s important to embrace an attitude of learning.
I love what William Least Heat-Moon, an American writer and historian, said: “Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire, to know nothing for certain. An inheritance of wonder and nothing more.”
And Octavia Butler, another American writer, says, “I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more.”
Failure is a good learning opportunity. So is struggle. And joy. And disappointment. And hurt. And…
You get it. Life is a learning opportunity. But we must remain open to learn from it. We can spend our whole lives just existing. Going through the motions. Making the same mistakes again and again and never even noticing room for improvement.
I want to learn as much as I can about the world and its people and history and the present and the imagined future. I want to learn how I fit into the fabric of that past and present and future. I want to learn what I can do to make it a more beautiful place for everyone.
Wonder is good at doing that.
Have a beautiful month full of wonder, new ideas, and learning opportunities.
Here are my favorite ways to learn from life:
1. Let yourself feel what you feel. Then learn.
When my sons are flooded with emotions after an altercation or a disappointment or an experience that upset them in some way, there is no room for immediate learning. When the body and brain are flooded with emotions, that’s all we can consider. We don’t have capacity for learning.
So I have to wait until the strong feelings pass to talk to them and teach.
It’s the same in our own lives. When an experience leaves us flooded with an emotion—fear or hurt or embarrassment at misspeaking, we aren’t ready for learning. But feelings pass. So when the emotions have calmed, we can consider what we might learn from our experience. (And guess what’s great at helping us learn? Journaling!)
2. Read widely.
As if I really need to tell you this. But I often remind my kids: the more you read, the more you know. Maybe you won’t know everything and maybe you won’t know anything for certain (still), but reading exposes you to a wealth of information. Books, magazines, newspapers, comic strips, anything you can get your hands on—read it! When you read about the experiences from the viewpoints of other people, especially people who are different from you, it will open your mind to new information. What an exciting possibility!
3. Listen to other people.
Reading is a form of “listening” to other people. But listen, too, to the people around you. Seek out other viewpoints. Try to understand those who differ from you (this is work I’m trying to do as well…and it has been some of the hardest work I’ve done in my life).
When I was a journalist, I had to interview all kinds of people. People whose beliefs made me bristle. (Once I had to report on a KKK rally in Austin. It was very difficult to stomach.) People whose stories opened my eyes to new ways of thinking and being. People who challenged me and angered me and delighted me and frustrated me. And at the end of the day I had to write a balanced story as though I was an objective observer of life, not an opinionated participant in it. It was good practice for the listening I’d need to do to maintain an attitude of learning.
Listen without judgment. Absorb people’s stories and knowledge. Weigh them against your own. Think for yourself, but don’t think in a vacuum.
Before every encounter with a person (especially the difficult ones) ask yourself, what might I learn from them?
It’s a question that can change the world, I think.
