Progress and Growth

On Monday mornings my son’s school has an assembly called chapel. The kids all sit on the floor in groups and the parents who choose to show up, sit toward the back of the room. One of the things they do in each chapel is have class reporters come up for each class, first through fifth. One student from each section shares something they did at school that week. The fifth graders do a slideshow on a topic of their choosing.

What struck me this time was the huge change from first grade to third grade to fifth grade. In a matter of four years, these kids go from barely being able to read and write to expressing their thoughts eloquently, putting together a coherent presentation, and adding their own unique voice into their project. The difference between first grade and third is wide and deep and the amount of growth and learning from first grade to fifth is mind blowing.

All in four years.

This got me thinking about my life and growth and learning. I know that we spend the years between six and twenty-one in school and our full-time job during that time is to learn as much as possible, so it makes sense that most of our learning takes place during that period of our lives. But does it really have to stagnate so much after we leave school?

I love learning. While I have my favorites (like languages, art, math, literature, statistics, and psychology) I am always happy to learn anything at all. It’s rare to find a class I wouldn’t love to take. And if you’ve been around here for a long while, you know that I take a lot of online classes. But, sitting in that chapel made me realize that the growth rate I’ve had in the last four (or ten really) years is much lower than I’d like.

More importantly, it made me realize how much we are capable of growing in a short amount of time.

It made me wonder why this is something that degrades over time. Is it just because of time limits? Is it because we don’t go to school anymore so we don’t have to work so hard at it? Is it that our brains are not capable of such acute growth anymore? (I know they used to think that, but I also know they’ve proven that our brain grows and learns and adapts our whole lives.) Is it that we stop believing we can and just stop trying? Is it that there’s too much going on? Is it that we just don’t care?

I am not sure what the answer is. I don’t even know what it is, for me. I spent a lot of time learning when I was in my twenties. I took a ton of college courses locally in NYC just for fun. When I lived in Japan, I took daily Japanese classes and when I returned to NYC, I continued them as well as Italian and Psychology, Sign Language, Literature classes and many more. But when we moved to the West Coast, I stopped. I think it’s partly due to the lack of freedom I feel because I can’t drive around as easily as I’d like and partly due to the more hectic life I lead as my family of two became a family of four.

As I sat in that room, I realized how much I missed learning and growing.

(In honesty, another part of my life that I dropped around the same time is volunteering and I miss that dearly, too.)

I know my kids are still a little too young and that as they grow up, some of the liberties I had will come back but I noticed that, like most things, these muscles need regular attention or they atrophy. Since I’ve begun working from home, I’ve become less socially comfortable and taking a class online seems so much easier now than physically going to one. But I know that it’s less enjoyable in many ways (while more practical in others).

I’m not sure what my point is with this post except maybe to share some of my thoughts from Monday morning and the realization that we humans are capable of mind-blowing growth and progress in a short amount of time. I don’t ever want to lose sight of that. I don’t ever want to think it’s too late.

So the big question now is what’s next? I am one year away from forty and I’d really like to make this last year of my 30s count.

How do I bring on some mind-blowing growth?