Learning

Learning is a process. Processes take time and effort. Without a process learning can be spotty, lucky, irregular, random or nonexistent. If you know how you learn then keep minding yourself and refining your process or processes. If you do not know how you learn perhaps start by writing things down. It is harder knowing where you are or where you are going without knowing where you have been. It has harder knowing where you have been…if you do not know where you have been. What did you do or not do, feel or not feel, see or not see, ask or not ask, remember or forget?

Writing things down helps ingrain them in your brain by making you think through things again (beyond, more than just that one time in that one past and ever-longer-ago moment), giving you more opportunities to relive and remember. Writing further binds you to the activity and its energies and inputs and influences. Writing is like unfolding a map: at first you may only have a small section but as you begin unfolding and exploring more and more of the map is revealed and makes sense. You can look back and know at least more than you might remember remembering. You can make connections between points and chart paths to unknown regions or favorite haunts or desired destinations.

Everyone learns in different ways. Writing may not be your entire process but it can be a useful tool. You do not have to write down everything that happened but you can write down everything you remember, which is something, and better than nothing. If you ink it you think it.