School always felt like a punishment to me, and that's a shame. Because learning should be an adventure, not a grind.
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| What a tangled web we weave... |
To this day, I'm slow to learn new things. I'd like to go about my day, do my thing, and move along to the next thing. But that's really no way to live.
I want to be one of those people who wake up in the morning, greet the dawn with open arms and feel blessed to be given another new day. I really do.
But I'm just. so. tired.
In this era of living "intentionally," I've been attempting to notice the little things. I was washing my hands the other day, for example, and I marveled at the silky feel of the soap, the bubbles that glistened in a rainbow of colors, and the sensation of being clean.
I noticed a spider had woven a web into the window screen in the kitchen. Bees buzzing in these little teeny daisy-like wildflowers growing in the backyard. And wisps of steam coming off my coffee in the morning. All little things.
And yet, yesterday I was doing what I image my cat would identify as "the zoomies," cutting the grass on a break from work, making our lunches, and cramming in a few chores before heading back to my desk. None of this was conducive to being "intentional."
Have I learned nothing?
Well, I guess I'm a work in progress, but that progress is awfully slow.
Was there anything I learned in school that's helping me today? Well, sure, I got a good Catholic education (grade school, anyhow). I learned my maths and my English pretty good. A little science. (Which I didn't enjoy at all until middle school and lab. Hands-on science is great, I discovered.) And a little geography (emphasis on "little"). Our schoolbooks made foreign countries sound about as exciting as a day in a cornfield.
Of course, I was fortunate that in high school, I was able to take vocational classes, where I learned how to type, do basic accounting, and overall business skills. Home Ec taught me rudimentary cooking and sewing. And the co-op class my senior year had me working half days in a print shop, an experience that went a long way in providing depth to my education in a valuable way.
Looking back over my career, I've learned more than I realized. While others were reluctant about the internet when it became a thing at work, I embraced it. I've kept up with technology, although I still think that watching a DVD or reading a book I can hold in my hands is better than the digital alternatives, which live in a cloud and can go POOF at the whim of their host.
I'm learning to manipulate AI for work, although I find it worrisome. Am I contributing to the downfall of intelligent thought by using this tool?
Perhaps I'm delusional (more likely than perhaps). But I believe that someday, people will want to shop in malls again, that we'll return to interacting in person, that cell phones will become passé, and we'll finally turn them off to get away from the exhaustion that is social media.
Which is why learning new things is all well and good, but retaining basic skills from the beforetimes is important, too. Using our imagination, being in touch with the world around us, looking out for each other. The good citizens we were taught to be growing up.
So many important things we learned early on that seem to have been pushed aside.
Although I can confidently say, memorizing the Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Carroll in 5th grade is not something that will ever prove useful in daily life.
But I digress. I've learned how to do that pretty well.
