Doing things again.

Today I decided I was too tired to do anything but sew. It is one of my favorite pastimes, and better than therapy when I am mulling things over. It seemed a good time to make something really hard, so I undertook to make a jacket that I have made before, and was probably the hardest thing I have ever constructed. It is a jacket designed for travel, with lots of secure pockets in the lining for carrying passports and money and whatever. Although I am not much of a traveler, I made this jacket a while back, and it took me a couple of weeks to follow all the detailed instructions of where things were supposed to be attached to be both secure and accessible. Today, I wondered at first why I wanted to spend another couple of weeks making a jacket that have not yet worn, but in another fabric. Then I knew that I needed to be absorbed, and this would fill the bill. But I found out something very interesting. After about two concentrated hours of pinning, pressing, and sewing, I am about one third of the way finished. The way is familiar, the destination plain to me, and it just requires my attention to get the job done. It occurred to me that there are so many things in life just like that. Remember finding your way to school for the first time? It all seemed so mysterious, and then it wasn’t. Remember your first day on the job, any job, and how you wondered if you would ever master this complicated process? And then you did, and by the time you taught it to your replacement, it all seemed like a piece of cake. So many of the firsts that we do in life are like that, aren’t they? How nice to confirm that we learn by doing, and that life can get easier in some ways while it is getting harder in others. I think it is important to confirm to ourselves that we are constant learners, and that with the learning comes something else—the responsibility of passing on what you have learned to someone else. Last week I shared some of what I learned at the Shoah Foundation to a class of 6th and 7th grade students. I cannot know what they took away, and of course it was not the first time this subject has been introduced to them and surely it will not be the last, but it felt right to be a conduit between the past and the present and the future. Teaching is something I have not done in a while, and it reminded me of how very important it is to keep in touch with those learning about what you already know. There is always a new question that comes up that makes you think or reflect. There is a new pair of eyes that you can look through to give you a new view. So today, I recommend that you do something complicated—again. It might be cooking a complicated dish, or writing something about your thoughts, or building something, or fixing something in your house. It might be repairing a relationship that needs some work. Doing it again is easier and nicer the second time around.