Nov 20 What is one life lesson that you are thankful for having learned?
I learned to swim at age 35.
Until then, I could dogpaddle and fake a heavy-legged sidestroke, but it wasn't pretty and it wasn't fun.
The summer of my thirty-fifth year, I confessed to my doctor that I was experiencing the mother-crazies: short-tempered days and sleepless nights as I tended six children under the age 10, including 9-month-old twins. As I look back, I now think his suggestion to "get some exercise" was a patronizing response to my desperate plea. (I struggled for another ten years before a more attuned doctor helped me back to sanity.)
Although exercise wasn't the answer to what ailed me, the doc's suggestion did inspire me to learn to swim, for which I am grateful on several levels.
First, my excellent teacher broke down the complicated multi-step process of swimming into individual steps I could understand and execute. I couldn't swim, but by golly I could, with practice, 1) kick my feet 2) move my arms 3) float on the water 4) turn my head 5) take a breath and 6) repeat. With each step, I inched toward confidence. When I learned to open my eyes and swim in a straight line, I felt magical, as if I'd learned to fly.
When I returned to classroom teaching seven years later, I was again grateful for having learned to swim, as it provided a metaphor for teaching students about speaking in front of a class. Some kids take naturally to water. They "always" knew how to swim. Others, like me, had to be taught step by step. Too often we teach kids to speak by "throwing them in the pool" once or twice a year. We tell them it's time to give a speech. The naturals swim, the sinkers go under.
I then explained that I had needed a good teacher to patiently teach me the multiple steps to staying afloat (and moving forward) in water, and I would teach them the individual skills needed to "swim" through a public presentation. I would not just throw them in and watch them flail.
We practiced walking confidently to the podium. We practiced making eye contact. We practiced the expectant pause that draws in the audience's attention. We gave 3-sentence speeches (Turtles are amazing. Several types can live to be more than 100 years old. Now you know something about turtles.) until we could deliver them smoothly, with eye contact and a gesture. We wrote introductions, then bodies, then conclusions--delivering each with our increasing skill. In other words, we practiced, practiced, practiced each small skill, linking it to the others: learning to swim.
Learning a new skill as an adult is challenging, humbling, and exhilarating. I've since learned to ride a unicycle, play the accordion, and (almost) walk a slackline. This week I wrote my first "hour of code." Learning to swim at a belated age nudged me from my fixed mindset that all skills could be divided into two groups: things I could do; things I couldn't do. There is a third group: things I can learn how to do.
The summer of my thirty-fifth year, I confessed to my doctor that I was experiencing the mother-crazies: short-tempered days and sleepless nights as I tended six children under the age 10, including 9-month-old twins. As I look back, I now think his suggestion to "get some exercise" was a patronizing response to my desperate plea. (I struggled for another ten years before a more attuned doctor helped me back to sanity.)
Although exercise wasn't the answer to what ailed me, the doc's suggestion did inspire me to learn to swim, for which I am grateful on several levels.
First, my excellent teacher broke down the complicated multi-step process of swimming into individual steps I could understand and execute. I couldn't swim, but by golly I could, with practice, 1) kick my feet 2) move my arms 3) float on the water 4) turn my head 5) take a breath and 6) repeat. With each step, I inched toward confidence. When I learned to open my eyes and swim in a straight line, I felt magical, as if I'd learned to fly.
When I returned to classroom teaching seven years later, I was again grateful for having learned to swim, as it provided a metaphor for teaching students about speaking in front of a class. Some kids take naturally to water. They "always" knew how to swim. Others, like me, had to be taught step by step. Too often we teach kids to speak by "throwing them in the pool" once or twice a year. We tell them it's time to give a speech. The naturals swim, the sinkers go under.
I then explained that I had needed a good teacher to patiently teach me the multiple steps to staying afloat (and moving forward) in water, and I would teach them the individual skills needed to "swim" through a public presentation. I would not just throw them in and watch them flail.
We practiced walking confidently to the podium. We practiced making eye contact. We practiced the expectant pause that draws in the audience's attention. We gave 3-sentence speeches (Turtles are amazing. Several types can live to be more than 100 years old. Now you know something about turtles.) until we could deliver them smoothly, with eye contact and a gesture. We wrote introductions, then bodies, then conclusions--delivering each with our increasing skill. In other words, we practiced, practiced, practiced each small skill, linking it to the others: learning to swim.
Learning a new skill as an adult is challenging, humbling, and exhilarating. I've since learned to ride a unicycle, play the accordion, and (almost) walk a slackline. This week I wrote my first "hour of code." Learning to swim at a belated age nudged me from my fixed mindset that all skills could be divided into two groups: things I could do; things I couldn't do. There is a third group: things I can learn how to do.
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| Eloise, a natural swimmer, and her mother, a natural sinker. |
Somehow, I missed this post. I learned to knit at age 34. :) And it became an obsession! Kids are SHOCKED that I haven't been knitting all my life. You can learn anything you decide to, I say. Thank you for inspiring and reaffirming this for me. I am a distracted and distressed mother of one. :) You AMAZE me!
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