In a world surrounded by educated people, I often hear “I want to be a life-long learner.” We all want to be open to what is still unknown, undiscovered; and for some, those yet unmastered fields. I have a master’s degree, but don’t feel like I’ve mastered anything other than to continually make mistakes. I’ve learned that if you really, truly, genuinely want to be a life-long learner, than you’re bound to make TONS of mistakes.
I’ve just made a whopper of one, and I’m not very happy about it. Winston Churchill, thought to be a very wise man of the last century, describes my currently crushed ego: “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.” Mistakes may be the best teachers, but they don’t always make me the most ready student. Quite frankly, I hate making mistakes. I loathe making mistakes.
Spending time with a 3-year old has taught me kids are accustomed to making mistakes because so many things are unknown. As we become more aware of the world, however, we tend to develop a mistake-o-meter. We anticipate what could be a mistake, and then account for it. When I first learned racquetball my mind understood the geometry of the ball hitting one wall, then another. It understood the way I needed to hold the racquet, where to make it connect with the ball, to then make it bounce in the exact right place on the wall for the win. Well, none of that mattered. My body hadn’t yet learned how to translate this foreign brain language of racquetball. I ended up flailing into walls or tripping on my own feet more often than making any sort of contact with the ball. I just “learned myself into a mistake.”
The many layers of learning, mounds of schooling, and levels of lecture listening create a mountain of knowledge ... upon which I tumble sheepishly all-the-way down when I mess up. We seem to have more grace with others and ourselves when we walk into an unknown situation, but arm me with a few layers of knowledge and I can be dangerously heading towards mistakesville. And that’s the recipe I used to walk into the most deflated loaf of bread EVER! Take a look!
Spreading peanut butter on these slices is like maneuvering a brainteaser, and eating this sandwich is like a hike for your mouth; only a boring walk through the great plains, with the giant Rockies and Appalachians on either side of this deflated, flat land.
This bread looks awful!
But it tastes great!
The continual problem I tried to correct: low rising, dense breads. In my everything-but-the-kitchen-sink manner of baking, I’ve been loading my loaves with multiple flours, nutty grains, and crunchy nuts. I took two new approaches – simplify and slow down!
This method worked. The bread finally rose to that perfect 1-inch above the pan during the 2 hour rise time – it was exquisite! I slowed down, allowing more rising time. In my excitement, I didn’t slow down enough to read the last steps of the recipe, however. When it said bake for 20 minutes I thought “that seems a little short, but hey, this was a simpler bread so perhaps it didn’t need longer baking.”
After 10 minutes I took the loaves out to turn, and butter those fabulously puffy tops so they’d crust perfectly browned. As soon as the butter hit the barely cooked loaves they practically squeaked out the air as they collapsed under my pressure to be the most perfect of all loaves. I stuck them back in the oven and consulted the recipe, only to discover my mistake – bake for 20 minutes, then rotate and repeat. I had just enough information and follow-through to learn myself into a mistake. Now I’m left with the choice of letting it continue to be a mistake, or making a mistake into learning.
The bread tasted delicious … so it seems the lesson is already bearing some fruit.
Bread is going to fall, mistakes are going to be made, and lessons are going to still be learned. All the years of learning in the classroom, or in conversation with others have left sticky notes of wisdom upon me. Some of those have begun to etch themselves into my brain, but the fear of making a mistake, or the embarrassment of failure is more like a vice on my heart. It seems this bread resounded in my spirit Mark Twain’s message that an “education consists mainly of what we unlearn.” My deliciously deflated bread has taught me to unlearn failure, so I might learn the grace of living. I may have had enough layers of knowledge to get myself into a mistake, but I also had the depth of wisdom to find my way out of that sense of failure. And to still enjoy a delicious pb&j!
I read once about a painter who always prepped her canvas with a moment of prayer. She would then take a pencil, and write that prayer upon the center of the canvas. With each brush stroke that prayer began to disappear from sight, being covered up with layers of color and texture, yet the prayer is infused with the work. Upon our creation God breathed a prayer into our Spirits, and impressed it into our hearts. The many layers of life, learning, loving, and falling create the facets and layers of who we are as people; and even if we can't always see it, that prayerful wisdom gifted to us by God remains within our core. Many people believe our mistakes may damn us; but I think this mistake led me into learning that I’m a flawed human who can make some damn good bread. Sometimes we fall flat, yet our sweetness still remains.
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