What season of learning are you in?

Hey all, I’m thinking of LA-area folks with a lot of worry and love these days. If you’re looking for somewhere to direct your money, goods etc, look here. And if you’d like to read a story about all the helpers, here’s a great one.

I published a piece in last weekend’s San Francisco Chronicle about how elder care is a social justice issue and a growing crisis. Thanks to this community for their incredible support on the writing I’ve been doing on my dad’s journey with dementia, my family’s journey as caregivers, and the closing of the program that was making such a difference in our lives. You all are incredible. I feel so lucky to write for you and learn from you.

For How To! we did a fun episode on switching careers mid-life that I am guessing could be useful to some of you, so throwing a link in here on that, too. And remember - if you have a problem you need help solving, you can always send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might just have you on the show. Okay, now on to the main event…

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I’ll let you in on a strange secret about me. I hate talking on the phone. Or more accurately, I hate answering the phone when someone calls. Once I’m on the phone, it’s often quite lovely (even though I still don’t understand how one is supposed to end a phone call gracefully). But that first moment when the phone rings, whether I know who it is or not, my insides simply scream “Oh nooooooo!” as if a serial killer is at the proverbial door.

Why? I have no idea. It’s a very strange aversion for a journalist to have; a big part of my job is talking on the phone to strangers. Maybe I’m a control freak about my time and there is something about someone intruding on my “well laid plans” that freaks me out. Or maybe it’s that I am pathologically present-minded, so the idea of breaking from my current present to enter a new one (or God forbid, multi-tasking) just throws me the hell off. In any case, this is how I am. Or more accurately, this is how I was.

Since I’ve taken over care of my aging parents, I have become a person who answers the phone. I answer when my friends call. I answer when unknown numbers pop up. I also make a lot of phone calls. Suddenly, there isn’t a serial killer at the door as far as my insides are concerned. There is likely a pharmacist or a day program administrator or a financial adviser who specializes in elders. I need them and I don’t know when they’ll call again, so I’ve learned to answer the damn phone.

It turns out that there are some things that you learn simply because you are drawn to them and some things you learn only in moments when you absolutely have to, when your life slams into a season that demands something of you that you don’t know how to give. Let’s call it learning by attraction and learning by necessity.

Things I’ve learned by attraction: how to write, how to bake sourdough bread, how to facilitate a great meeting or a panel, the story of civil rights leader Septima Poinsette Clark, weird facts about sharks and seahorses and loquat trees alongside my kids, Ada Limon’s poetry, how to send a Quicktime audio file for my podcast, how to sink a three-pointer.

I actually made this bread, thanks to my teacher Ed.

Things I’ve learned by necessity (all recently): how to answer the phone, how Medicare and Medicaid work, how to say “I’ll come back and we can discuss this when you’re feeling better,” how to use the soothing power of music to calm and delight someone with dementia, how to be kind and dogged at the same time with medical professionals, how to talk about only what is right in front of me and not ask a single abstract question, how to recognize the signs when it is time to call in hospice support.

Which is all to say — I’m curious, what season are you in and what is it demanding that you learn?

It might be logistical things, like those I mentioned above. Maybe you’re a new parent, and lord is the learning curve steep then. Or maybe you have a new disability and you are learning a bunch of hard and weird and maybe liberating things about your body and its limitations (and about society’s discomfort with such limitations). Maybe you’re learning something about our broken financial system because you are trying to pay off your school or medical debt, or wondering if you can afford to buy a house, or need to plan for longterm care in a country that doesn’t take care of its elders.

There is also a lot of learning by necessity that is not logistical, but spiritual.

Things I am learning by necessity, spiritually, in this season: how to sense my own limits and communicate them or, put another way, how to be sovereign, how to fall out of love with indispensablity how to accept help that is offered, and the very advanced version of spiritual growth for me, how to ask for help.

My spiritual growth is all up in the herbal tarot card for chickweed. My witchy bestie did a reading for me on my birthday and whoa.

That’s a lot. An awful lot. I’m existentially tired just writing it down.

It’s kind of messed up that the moment when you are getting crushed by life is also the moment when you have to learn the most. I can tell you it isn’t particularly comfortable, but you already knew that, because these seasons come for absolutely everyone. Whether your dad is dying or your kid is sick or your marriage is falling apart or your going bankrupt, no one escapes the season of “another fucking growth opportunity.”

Or, as my mentor Parker Palmer likes to put it, “welcome to the human race.”

I am thinking about how these two kinds of learning—by attraction and by necessity—are so at work as I witness my kids become themselves. Watching them learn by attraction is a total joy. Maya pulled some old Doc Martens out of the Goodwill pile yesterday, painted them white, and is now layering a groovy pattern on top that she is adapting from the Internet. Learning by attraction. When she struggled socially last year, I watched her flailing around, trying to figure out how to both be authentically herself, but also develop enough flexibility to connect. Learning by necessity. The former is a joy to watch as a parent. The latter? Excruciating. But both are absolutely foundational to her ability to thrive in the world.

None of us should be deprived of our learning by attraction, but none of us can mature without learning by necessity. That’s the beauty in it—even as the whole house is a mess and you burn the bagels and your mom can get one decent night’s sleep and your dad thinks he needs to check on the car 35 times in an hour and your kid misses her old neighborhood and the gas bill was stupidly high, you can feel yourself becoming someone thicker, wiser, more courageous. You are capable of less than you thought, but also more—in some strange, ineffable way. You are soft and weepy and sturdy as a tree, all at the same time. You are someone who learns by attraction and by necessity because you are human, just like everybody else. And that feels far less lonely than trying to pretend (even to yourself) like you’ve got it all under control.

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So for real, what season are you in and what is it demanding that you learn?