Get Lost

I was the weird child who actually loved school most of the time. I loved the smell of new markers, chalk, fresh clean notebooks waiting to be written in. Binders with dividers made my heart happy. The best day was when we got to go to the library and sit on the carpet while Mrs. Condie read to us. Or those glorious and rare occasions when we got to lie on mats in the lunchroom and eat licorice while having a read-a-thon.

I loved delving into both new subjects and familiar ones. I'd spend summers memorizing Shakespeare or practising Italian conjugations just for fun. My favourite spot was sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor with a book or my typewriter. I remember the day I got the shiny, satisfyingly-pink card that admitted me to the grown-up section of the public library. I lived for the arrival of the summer Bookmobile, where I could check out Hardy Boys mysteries (I still remember the smell in the back of that van). I thought driving a Bookmbile would be the best job ever (I still do). 

In high school, I lost patience with the pace of things and started taking university courses on the side, eventually leaving after 11th Grade to attend uni fulltime. I remember looking through the catalogue of possible courses, marvelling at the range of offerings and thinking how lucky I was to get to choose whatever I wanted to study. I took classes in seven languages my first semester. I found physics fascinating. I walked through the art gallery and attended plays and took the guided tour of trees on campus. I fondled textbooks in the bookstore between classes. I sat in on courses I wasn't even enrolled in, just for the joy of soaking up information.

After two aborted attempts to complete a Masters Degree while working fulltime and raising three kids, I dropped out of formal school and just audited the occasional course. I took summer Parks & Rec courses with my kids. I've signed up for a Welsh Ladies' Chorus. I continue to read constantly, both fiction and non-fiction, and I prowl the neighbourhood Little Free Libraries daily to see what's on offer.

And I spend entirely too much time on YouTube, learning everything from Irish crochet to how to build my own solar collector from pop cans. But there's a bit of a dark side to YouTube. Aside from the trolls and nasty comments you often encounter there, the lure and attraction of YouTube itself can be detrimental. I get sucked into the rabbit hole of the day (How to use a portable power station to run your freezer, How to properly plant grape vines, American Sign Language instruction) and forget to clean house, cook, do laundry, write, garden, or any number of other things I intended to do that day. For someone who loves learning, YouTube can be a boon or a complete timekiller. I start off watching a gardening video and somehow end up watching opera-singing parrots or political podcasts or Breton country dances, and then look up to see my whole morning has gone and I've accomplished nothing.

At some point, one must set down the screen and go out into the world and DO the things learned. It doesn't feed me when I watch others eat lovely food online. I might know everything in the universe about growing perfect tomatoes, but if I don't actually put a shovel into the ground, none of that knowledge does a thing for me. Watching someone in the Philippines patch his roof won't stop the leak in mine.

On the other hand, I don't believe knowledge is ever wasted. All of it expands your mind and makes the world---and your brain---a more interesting place to be. But with so much to choose from, so much on offer, it's important to be selective. Time is limited, the brain-cell capacity is also limited, and not all knowledge is equally valuable to my personal situation. 

I'm still trying to find the balance between passion and practicality. Diving into education vs Doing what needs to be done. But learning gives joy, and that's no small thing these days. There's so much to discover and absorb! So go get lost down that rabbit hole now and then. But if you get lost for too long, be prepared to find the world may have moved on when you resurface.