The Learner's Mind

 

"Learning to Walk" David Fabricius Aaby

I’m learning to walk.

As most people who know me know, I fell and broke my knee-cap this summer. When I was healed, and my doctor blessed me and said, “you may go,” I asked him for a referral to physical therapy.  I had recently learned that my knock knees, and the arthritis they created, could be improved through exercise. The doctor said yes, that although it would not take away any deformation, it would strengthen and stabilize my knees.

I walk funny. 

I’ve always thought I walk funny because my knees are deformed. Come to find out, my knees are deformed because I walk funny.

So I am learning to walk. And to stand. And to strengthen muscles that are atrophied.

When my therapist first watched me walk, he said I need to start out with my heels when I walk. And he stood me in front of a mirror. “You’re standing on your toes,” he said. “Put your feet down.” Those first days were rough.

When you first come to AA, they tell you, “It’s okay. You only need to change one thing. Everything.”

That’s what it feels like learning to stand and to walk again. I walk down the steps at my house and say, “Put your heel down. Is your whole foot on the step? Okay, step down now.” I’m slower and more deliberate. I do that with stepping up, too. And with walking.

It feels very different, and sometimes at the end of the day, I’m just sore. But it feels grounded. Safe. Stable.

I ran into a friend from church at the grocery store and she asked about my knee. I told her about changing one thing, and how I was doing it again, and she said, “Good. Keep the learner’s mind.”

This semester, I’m teaching hybrid classes for the first time. I’ve wanted to flip my classes for a long time—to put most of the lecture online and do group work and discussion in the classroom. Well, teaching a hybrid class is teaching me how to teach all over again. The only thing I have to change is everything.

So this morning I awakened at four, as I have all week, and I began working on a lecture for a class a few weeks down the road. First the Power Point, then the audio, then turn it into a video. “Put your heel down. Are you stable? Keep going.”

It’s all very Zen, folks.