Learning and Unlearning

My days have become suddenly interesting. For reasons I don’t have room to explain here, I’m spending my mornings at a local preschool. In the halls and classrooms, wide eyes and runny noses abound. Because it’s all so new, what I’m most keenly aware of is the vast amount of learning going on around me. One class is learning about the letter T for the first time, while another is listening to a visitor teach about how to take care of one’s teeth. Even when they’re left to themselves - playing with playdough, racing toy cars, or looking at picture books - they’re learning, and I can’t help but want to follow their example. I want to learn something new, too. 

This morning, however, was the day I leave the preschool and go sit with my therapist for an hour. Under her care, I’m unwrapping my life and looking at all the ways I’ve learned to cope with the world surrounding me. We recently reached a point in our work where she said, “OK, here’s where the fun begins.” What she meant was we’d reached a moment of truth. I would have to look at important things and unlearn some long-practiced ways of thinking and behaving. 

Driving away from the session, I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between of the two worlds. In one, it’s all about learning. In the other, it’s all about unlearning. Rather than pick, I know that the balanced life I desire is found somewhere between the two. 

Like the children, I want to open my eyes wide, regardless of my age, and learn something new every day. I want to look at things and people with wonder, as if for the first time, and learn something I’ve never known. 

I also want to unlearn just as much as I learn. Maybe it’s a story I’ve told myself for years, an opinion that’s given me comfort, or a behavior that always makes people laugh. Whatever it may be, I want to live slowly enough, deliberately enough, to “catch myself in the act”, as a mentor once said, and try something new. In other words, I want to unlearn. 

Like a skater on ice, I want to push with one leg, then push with the other. Learn. Unlearn. Learn. Unlearn. Slowly, I believe, I’ll begin to move forward.