I was still a tot when I asked my mother the first question she couldn’t answer.  She sent me to the Library where I discovered the wonder of independent study and learning.

Years after, when the President of a regional University asked me to articulate how I felt about education, I wrote:

The key to a vital life is an eagerness to learn and a willingness to change.

LEARNING is meaningful to me.

Learning ways to DO a thing and learning how NOT to do a thing.

Learning by observation.  Learning by overlay (if it worked on this maybe it will work on that).

Learning by experimentation.  Learning by doing.  Learning by throwing things up in the air and watching how and where they land.

Learning by reading. And reading.  And reading.

Learning by listening to and watching others.  Strangers. Friends. Neighbors.  News. Celebrity. Flowers in the field. Birds in the sky.  Voices of long held cultural knowledge.

Learning by asking, Who? Why? How? When? Why Not?

Learning by sitting still and watching what happens when I do nothing.

Learning by prayer.  Praying in paint, poetry, proses and poses.  Praying and learning all the names for holy that I might hear.

Learning that I am my own best source of knowing and learning:  that I can recognize a void and learn to fill it.  That I can see certain abundance and learn how to share it.

Learning by opening my heart and my journal at the same time and seeing what my hand while holding a pen, wants to teach me.

Learning is representative of the most dynamic elements of my life.  When I am learning I am least resistant to change and most open to the “impossible.”

When I am learning I’m not so caught up in “everything I know,” and “doing things right.”

I’ve learned to use the word “yet” as often as possible.  As in saying, “I don’t know how to do that YET.”

Learning is full of wonder, possibility and opportunity. When I learn something of specific use – I share it with people who might benefit or have demonstrated interest.  Keeps the learning cycle rolling.

Each day I intend to know more at the end of the day than I did when I started.  Failed expectations of a day are balanced by the presence of learning.