There’s a lot out there about learning – what, when, how. Even “with whom”.
What about the things you CAN’T seem to learn? Not through lack of desire or opportunity. The things you continue to beat your head against? The things you want to learn (possibly desperately want, or even need, to learn) but no matter the effort never seem to sink in, to “take” in your brain, to become part of your lived experience?
What about when you’ve been trying to learn for so long, and failing, that you can feel the mental blocks grow ever taller as you internalise the idea that you simply will NEVER know this thing, that you will always be less than a beginner?
What then? How do you overcome something that seems impossibly and persistently out of reach?
I have no answers, only sympathy. I stand here today, on this 14th day of Elul, to say that I stand with you. I too have things which are incredibly important for me to learn, but which remain – after a decade – maddeningly beyond me. If nothing else, at least you might take comfort in knowing there’s another who struggles like you do.
And if the point of my struggles is that it comforts others, then that will have to be enough, for me at least. But I pray not for you as well.