I. What is The Lesson?

Splayed across the table lie a handful of colorful jelly beans. My daughter Golda, who just turned 19 months old, stands in front of her toddler-sized green chair counting. “Wwwwwwuuuun… Tooooo… threeee…. Furteen!” It makes for an adorable video. As we’re teaching her numbers and colors, it also reminds me how we learn.

When we start something new, we’re going to be bad at it. We sound silly, look stupid, and do things wrong before we finally get them right. Beginners suck. And no one wants to suck.

The best part, however, is that with a little work we don't stay a beginner for very long. Being good at learning just means being comfortable in the wrongness, just when everyone else wants to quit. Becoming better at something is simply a test in awkwardness endurance.

This month I’m thinking about learning and what lessons are showing up in quarantine. (No, not how are we pushing ourselves to learn a language or musical instrument or whatever. We’re literally in a global crisis, it’s ok not to show up every day to be our best self and just, you know, be.)

But even passively, what are we learning right now? ...about ourselves and the people we’re isolating with? What do we miss and what do we not? What are we learning about our country as we try reopening or sharing news? What is the lesson in all of this?

Let’s open to page 1 and begin.

*“Rise Up” oil painting by Jennifer Anderson*

II. What Have We Learned?

When I was in college, it felt like every week I would discover something new and inspiring. I remember hearing about Elizabeth Gilbert and diving into her old articles and books. Then I’d see that she gave a talk at this conference. "OMG WHAT IS TED?!" And I’d soak that up and discover someone like Sarah Kay, devour her poetry and stumble across a video of her that was posted on this new platform called YouTube. Then Wikipedia. "Who’s Tig Notaro?" Lin-Manuel Miranda. Jonathan Harris. "Have you heard Janelle Monáe?” Facebook. Tina Roth Eisenberg. "You have to get Limewire." Michel Gondry. Debbie Millman. Podcasts. The iPhone.

The year after graduation I was reflecting with a friend that this age of discovery felt like it was over. So as a way to keep it going, we started a project called “This Week Amazing.” One thing a week that blew our minds. And while my last post was in 2017 and he stopped at the end of 2019 (we kept it going for over 10 years!), the project has transformed into a new kind of list for me.

A list of learning. I create a header with the year and then underneath, I’ll list experiences, people, books, jobs, movies, and write a bullet point or two of what I learned for each one. Experiences and people and art have always taught me things implicitly– I just make the lesson explicit. Everything I learn, I write down.

It’s a different kind of journal. Reviewing the last few years of lessons, I can clearly see where my focus was, what I was exposing myself to, who I was looking up to, and what I was consuming. Tracking my learning gives me perspective on what was important to me, what lessons have stuck and what I learned but forgot.

I just peeked back at the list. And just like any other journal, looking back makes me feel embarrassed. “I can’t believe I didn’t know that 'great friends are not always great travel companions’ and ‘meals without phones last longer.’"

But that’s the nature of our lives. We cannot be both young and wise. Looking back on old essays, portfolios, projects, and even old texts or emails, we should feel embarrassed. That’s the clearest sign that we've learned something.

*“Follow the Leaders” installation by Isaac Cordal*

III. When Will We Learn?

We all have someone in our lives that repeats the same mistakes. They date the same kind of people that treat them poorly. They go through the same cycles of health and illness. They get stuck in the same jobs.

Newsflash: it’s not only other people. Me too. You too. We repeat mistakes all the time. It’s just easier to see that fault in other people than to honestly look at ourselves. We repeat mistakes because we get comfortable in our ways and to learn our lesson can mean entering unknown territory or changing who we are. And that’s some scary shit. So we continue to repeat the same comfortable mistakes. We seek the same relationship. Fall into the same habits. Find the same job. . . until we learn better.

When we can learn who the right partner is for us and what our triggers are, we’re capable of healthier relationships. When we learn how we like to be managed and the environments we need to succeed, our career trajectory opens up. When we learn how to manage urges and build in healthy habits that we actually enjoy (not just do because we’re “supposed to”) we live more active lives.

It’s said that our brains are like sponges. But I think it's in a different way than just soaking up information like water. Press a finger into a sponge hard and long enough, and there’s a lasting mark. Having a meaningful experience can leave an impression on our brain. But the thing about sponges and our brain is that it's easy to go back to their original shapes.

In our lives, we are faced with the same lesson over and over until we learn it.

As a society, we face the same issues over and over, too. We are still struggling to learn so much, continuing to ignore reality and make the same mistakes. Mass shootings. Systemic racism. Climate change. The Opioid crisis. Even COVID-19.

We will continue to be shown over and over until the lesson is taught and we can be transformed.

Until we actually do something about them.

Until we learn.

IV. What Are We Learning?

Wake up. You're still here. This is not a dream.

Another day in quarantine and nothing has changed. Admittedly, most days I’m just trying to make it through until bedtime. Just passing the time from one meal to another snack to another meal before bedtime. There is a collective sense of hibernation. We’re all buried away in our dens and waiting this out. Feel it?

But every now and then I get this sense of the opposite. Not that I'm asleep and pausing my life until this is all over. But instead, that I’m completely awake. (Woke, is it?)

I can see more clearly than ever what the world would be if everything just stopped. If there was no media or work. No deadlines or sales or new thing to buy. No travel and no FOMO because nothing else is going on and no one else is busy. Just me, family, nature, time.

One of the best articles I’ve read recently is about the gaslighting that will inevitably happen once things start to reopen. Brands and companies will try to convince us that this never happened– that we need to spend and consume again, even more than before in order to live better. Is that a more alive life? Is consumerism a version of being more “awake” than now? Or is it a way of lulling us to sleep so we ignore some of the real issues going on in our world?

Literally at this moment, white people in Michigan are protesting with guns because they want to get haircuts and people in Minneapolis (and all over the country) are protesting because Black people are getting murdered. Note that only one of these groups are met with riot police.

Wake up.

We’re given the opportunity to see the issues now that weren’t always visible to us.

We’re being exposed to new ideas that were too quiet before.

We’re shown that going "back to normal" can mean something dangerous and deadly for so many– and we must find a new normal.

We have to be fully awake to see the patterns in front of us.

So the question I keep coming back to is: what are we supposed to be learning from all of this?

Let’s wake up.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this. The email refrigerator is meant to provoke and inspire discussion so I’d love to hear from you. I’m so grateful for your responses and comments. Also, if you feel like someone you know would like this, please share it.

Hope you’re staying healthy and learning something.

With love and gratitude,

Jake

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@jakekahana | jakekahana.com

Reference

Learning (Wikipedia)

Hibernation Vs Woke (Dense Discovery Newsletter)

Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting (Medium)

Waiting and Worrying (Seth Godin)

George Floyd’s Family Says Officers Involved with His Death Should Be Charged with Murder (CNN)