Made-a-Move Monday #3

As the old saying goes… practice makes perfect.

A well known phrase – so why is it so easily forgotten?

My “Move” this week was to start practicing.  As usual, getting myself to buckle down and do it was the main hurdle.  In my mind, I picture myself incorporating Hebrew and English letters and words into various things I want to make.  So much easier in my mind than in action – my writing Hebrew letters is painstakingly slow.  Somehow in my 40-something year old brain I forgot about practicing.

So, today, I started with the letter Aleph – the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and a letter that has a numerical value of 1.  A great starting place for step number 1   This letter is rich with deep meanings… but more about that in the future.

Drawing the alephs brought back memories of practicing…. practicing letters and penmanship, practicing cursive italics with pen and ink, practicing flute, practicing math problems.  As I practiced painting א, I realized that skills that I admire in others don’t flow from me more out of lack of practice than out of lack of talent.  If I could spend more time engaging in and practicing the things I like, I know I could be very successful in them!

I think this is, in many cases, the division point between children learning a new skill and adults.  Children are taught and expected to spend time “practicing”.  Adults don’t need any less practice for developing skills, they just have other expectations and responsibilities to attend to that tend to decrease ability to put time and attention into “just practicing”.  So many of us have this inner drive to constantly be accomplishing something all of the time, that it is difficult to take a step back and do remedial practicing.

So, while my “big move” for this week may seem like a very small thing (especially for an adult), I am eager to see where starting to practice will take me.

Moving along with Made-a-Move Mondays

- DebBee