Not Multiple-Choice

Fortunately, this morning, all I have is a sore arm.

I got my second vaccine dose yesterday afternoon. After a negative COVID test in the morning, taken in precaution due to a slight fever, chills, and exhaustion of the evening before, I got better as the day went on, and, at the doctor’s recommendation, followed through with my 3:15 appointment at the CVS in Sturbridge, MA. I seem to have had my primary reaction prior to the second shot rather than after.

I wonder if this was some mystical heightened sensitivity, anxiety, or something else altogether? I love how the mind wants to know. We want a clear reason for everything that happens, so we create a list of possible culprits and then interrogate the whole gang, certain that one of the suspects must be guilty. But rather than singular and simple, the ‘answer’ is just as likely to be ‘all of the above’ or ‘some of the above’ or ‘none of the above.’

One of the tricks I learned that allowed me to do well in school (and on standardized testing), was that the likeliest answer provided was probably the one they were looking for. Beneath this conscious knowledge which allowed me to eliminate the answers it couldn’t be and then guess between what was left, thereby greatly improving my chances, was my unconscious awareness that tests are never about ‘the truth’ but rather about the expectation of the person designing the test. Doing well in school was not a matter of learning about the world or myself, but rather having a clear understanding of what each particular teacher wanted.

Since then, I’ve come to realize how relational education is in another way as well. The relationship between the student and the teacher is equally and perhaps more important than the content that is covered. Most all my teacher friends know this and have been struggling to maintain these relationships on-line over this past year. Real learning is not about memorizing facts (though I am a great believer in memorizing poems which I believe have a salutary effect on one’s general well-being and sense of appreciation of life). Real learning is allowing oneself to go beyond the security of one’s opinion into the unexplored and unsettling world that is just beyond. And venturing beyond what we know entails danger and loss.

We rarely talk about the personal costs of learning. In the mid-’90s Robert Evans wrote a wonderful book called The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance, and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation in which he looked at the many factors in play when we are trying to create or encourage or even allow change. He writes specifically about educational organizations, but I think his insights apply equally to our internal efforts as well.

…the key factor in change is what it means to those who must implement it, and that its primary meanings encourage resistance: it provokes loss, challenges competence, creates confusion, and causes conflict.

I have long loved Evans’ writing about the often unspoken costs of change. His reflections seem equally true for learning as well. In learning, we lose the worldview that we had and therefore our sense of competence as an actor in that world. We are confused because the old rules and perspectives we had relied on are no longer applicable and this causes conflict as we work out new relationships and patterns of interaction.

Relationships and support from real people who can walk with us and reassure us as the world shape-shifts in our minds and around us are essential ingredients in learning and growth. Our job as parents and grandparents and friends of young people is not to tell them what we think they need to know, but to walk with them as they discover and rediscover the world around them. I suppose this equally applies to all the other human beings we encounter.

We can never know what someone else ‘needs’ to know. But we can be curious and supportive as they go through their many learnings. We can push back and challenge sometimes, but always with respect for the mysterious process of life unfolding in the form of each particular person. Life is not a multiple-choice test and my ‘answer’ is only one possible choice among the many that are allowed, encouraged, and celebrated by this vast and creative universe.