Lifelong learning and my twin, Emily

So there's this blog that I read. It's written by the woman who wrote Grace for the Good Girl which has so affected my life recently. The odd thing about a blog is that she has the opportunity to write about what she's feeling and thinking at the moment and it is published immediately, while with a book, she thinks about it for weeks, even years, before anyone gets to read it. I related to her book, but when her blog pops up in my inbox in the morning, it's often like I'm reading a page out of my own journal. Today was no exception. Her post today was about taking time to learn new things outside of our comfort zones. This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I have specialties, topics of conversations that I can talk about forever. I know a lot about the history of vintage shoes, wine, fiction, photography. All this is good, and all these things were once new to me. I did what I often do when I want to learn about something, I checked out books from the library and spent time on google, I talked with people who knew about these topics.

If I'm not learning, I'm not getting out of myself. If I'm not at least a little bit uncomfortable, I'm not growing.

New things can be hard. When I'm learning something I might ask questions that show my ignorance, I might make mistakes, I might be really uncomfortable for a while. I might fail. But I'm learning, and that's all part of the deal.

I hated learning to read.

This may shock those of you who have spent time reading my book blogs or who are friend with me on good reads, but it's true. I have very vivid memories of crying so hard I felt sick, trying to read about the little bunnies who were preparing for the winter. My mom read to me, so I knew that it was good to read, but I wanted her to keep right on doing it. It was so hard.

Eventually, I made it past the little bunnies and Matt and Pat and their hat upon which they sat. I started reading the Boxcar Children out loud so that when I stumbled over a word my mom could correct me. (I always wondered how she knew what the word was without looking at it). Now, it's hard to find me without a book close at hand.

Learning requires passion. You have to want it or you won't make it through the parts where you think you're just never going to get it. When I started yoga, I felt so uncoordinated, unable to move the ways I needed to move. A friend had this to say: "Keep doing it, one day it all clicks, I promise."

Yoga isn't my challenge anymore, I've gotten comfortable with it, when they tell me that I can do the advanced version if I want to, more often than not, I go for it.

On to the next challenge, and the one after that, and the one after that...