Song of Long Ago

Today there was a program: Charlie and Lola. This is an adorable cartoon with two little children. A brother and a sister. In today's episode Lola was experiencing difficulty reading and writing and counting. Having observed her own ineptitude in these areas as compared to her classmates, Lola tells her big brother Charlie she "is not keen to go to school tomorrow". Lola is just a tad insecure, and does not feel it would be well worth the effort to learn and practice these skills. According to Lola, it is quite enough fun to make up stories to match with the illustrations in her story books. It is very entertaining to make different types and sizes of squiggles to imitate writing, and ... as she only ever eats (at the most) 10 biscuits at a time, and only has ten toes, that is the largest number she would ever really need to learn. Charlie then explains to his sister with humoured affection that though it is indeed a bit of work to master the skills in which she is noticing deficiency, that eventually, if she does not give up, she will become good at these skills and the work will have been worth it. Besides ... should someday, in the park, more than ten starving stray puppies find their way to her, wouldn't she want to be able to count how many there were so that she could retrieve the appropriate number of doggy biscuits to distribute? Point taken, Lola works. As she begins to catch on to certain lessons within each larger skill, Lola begins to enjoy herself. She notices it is not taking her as long to get from sounding out the words, to understanding what all those letters add up to. She notices she does not always have to use her fingers (or toes) to count all the time anymore. Lola is enjoying learning.
Sometimes, I think I do not really want to learn more. Though I can recognize there is an infinity of information and wisdom I do not possess, and though I appreciate the fact that there is likely quite a lot of that same information and wisdom I would be better for possessing, sometimes the process involved in obtaining that information and wisdom just seems so terribly long and difficult. Then I begin the process. Once involved in the activity of learning there are, of course, peaks and valleys to the learning curve; but, more importantly the world seems bigger, I feel more solid and competent, I unexpectedly begin to appreciate other people in fresh perspective and I am granted ability to connect with Him in new areas and in previously unknown ways.
Lola reminds me, enjoy the process and know that each large mountain of a lesson in front of me can be crossed, if necessary, by crossing only one grain of dirt at a time.

Posted in: on 27.7.07 at at 15:37