You Can Learn It

» 040

I was talking with my friend yesterday when she said,

“I’m just not built that way.”

It sounded simple, but it stuck with me. I kept thinking about how often we say that — sometimes to excuse ourselves from trying, other times because we truly believe it.

But here’s what I’ve learned: almost everything we do today, we once learned to do.

We learned to walk, to talk, to eat, to love, even to think the way we do.

Pretty much everything about us was learned, either directly or indirectly.

That means we can also learn better things.

We can learn to communicate, to listen, to be patient, to be kind, to forgive, to love better.

No man is a finished product.

Even until our dying days, we’ll keep learning — from books, from conversations (even the ones not about us), from friends, from people’s actions, from life itself.

We are constantly learning.

So maybe the best resolve we can make as humans is this:

to intentionally learn the good things about life, in life.

You don’t have to be built for it; you can learn to do it.

You don’t have to be built to express your thoughts or talk about your emotions.

There’s a “learning” to it.

So when someone says, “I’m not built that way,”

I sometimes hear something else — maybe, “I haven’t learned it yet.”

It may take time.

But if you give your heart to learning — habits, actions, and conversations that make life beautiful — you’ll someday grow into the kind of person you once thought you weren’t “built” to be.

And you’ll realize it was all on the other side of learning.

Truly, it’s always on the other side of learning.

Your fellow storyteller,

Dami the Builder. 💚🌳

carpe diem.