Day Forty Two. There’s a drawer in my kitchen. It’s likely in yours, too. It’s the catch-all, collect-all. Half the time it won’t easily open because it’s crammed full of things. Of those things, there’s little order: some of this, one of those, six of these, and “why-are-we-keeping that?” We call it our junk. It’s there. It’s messy. But it’s necessary. It must be, for every time we think about emptying it, we find ourselves unable to clear the clutter that we may need tomorrow. And, even if we muster the strength to get rid of it, it slowly makes its way back: an eternal essential it seems to life. So maybe we should just call it “living.”

There’s also a drawer of sorts in my head. It’s likely in yours, too. It’s the catch-all, collect-all. Half the time we can’t easily use it because it’s crammed full of things. Of those things, there’s little order: a snippet of this, a visual of that, six facts about something, a memory of these, and “why-do-I-remember that?” We call it our mind. It’s there. It’s messy. And it’s complicated. It must be, for every time we think about organizing it, we find ourselves unable to prioritize what we may need tomorrow. And, even if we are able to get things in working order, it soon returns to a mess that doesn’t always conform to our expectations–or others’: an eternal enigma it seems to processing the world . So maybe we should just call it “learning.”

Okay, admittedly my attempt to juxtapose these two things falls a little short, but I do think that living like learning is messy. I tried to capture that essence in a tweet earlier this morning, for which I also issued a general admission/apology to any who’ve had to endure their own “mess” not fitting into the boxes of their education.

Our entire lives. Our mess in either of our drawers never goes away; it never fully sorts itself out. And I think we know this, but I think we forget it or ignore it (mostly out of convenience) when it comes to educating our children. We know that kids learn in different ways and at different times, but we continue to issue standard boxes as we cling to the constructs of clocks and calendars. That has to change. We cannot keep the clutter away for the sake of convenience. We have to accept the messes as they are, and then we have to help them manage their messes, which–just as we’ve come to do–they will manage the whole of their lives.

Happy Tuesday, all. Stay safe.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.