Repetition is the basis of learning
Repetition is the basis of learning, repetition is the basis of learning, repetition is the basis of learning
One of my friends sent me a screenshot from an old Wordpress blog where I first started writing. She’s been deeper into the archives of my writing than most people, and I asked her how she felt about all the repetition, since I’ve just spent the last 8 years of writing bouncing between a few of the same topics. To me, this repetition was a bit of a source of shame, a sign of the limitations of my writing ability, since it felt like I just ended up writing different versions of the same essay over and over again. However, she told me that she liked the repetition, since it showed what I found important and what I liked talking about.
And she’s right. I return to certain topics (creativity, mortality, friendships) with regularity, and it’s fascinating to see the differences in how I talk about things over time. It’s a bit of a time capsule for both my writing ability and the way that I think about things, a slow upward spiral. For example, in my second ever newsletter in 2017, I wrote about learning to focus on the process, a topic I returned to a year later for number 61, and something I explored in a piece for Lens in January of this year. It’s a pretty neat evolution from “focusing on the process” to “trusting the process” to learning to love the process, all while becoming more eloquent in the process.
When I was a super cool kid in high school, I attended a weeklong quiz bowl camp in rural Tennessee to rapidly learn a ton of random facts and improve my ability to hit a buzzer and answer questions about things that most 15-year-olds didn’t really know about. At the beginning of the camp, the teacher running the whole thing gave a speech about how the camp worked and then ended by repeating the line “repetition is the basis of learning” three times, a habit he would continue every night of that week. I learned a tremendous amount in that short week, something like a high level survey of topics like the Roman Empire, the history of philosophy, sociology, and beyond. My methodology included a lot of repetition, largely in the tradition of rote memorization.
All these years later, I have a passing knowledge of random Ancient Greek philosophers, but repetition continues to serve as my teacher. Learning is a lot less cut and dry when you no longer have tests and there’s no longer correct answers to any given problem. Learning still comes from repetition, but it looks more like making mistakes or re-learning lessons over and over and over again. More often than not, it doesn’t even feel like a repetition, as we forget our past experiences and wander blindly forward.
I personally thought that the ideas I uncovered in Rayne Fisher-Quann’s “no good alone” back in April felt so new and refreshing, but some of the basic ideas appear in something I wrote back in December of 2020. Without realizing it, I had just found myself finally learning by repeating something I already believed in better words, with more clarity, so it struck more deeply. If I had never thought about those ideas in the earlier state, I doubt they would’ve resonated and altered my behavior as much as they did.
I wonder if being more aware of my past patterns and explorations would make it easier for me to retread those steps and make it easier to learn. Would re-reading my old journal entries about my failed relationships make it easier for me to keep myself from making the same mistakes? Would it be easier to find the answers to my existentialism if I was able to better understand the directions my heart pulled towards when I was 16?
Lately, I’m searching for beauty in others again. I encountered an angel in a grocery story and now I continue to look for even more. I’m trying to find more opportunities to meet more people and deepen my relationships with the ones I already know and don’t see enough. I’ve slowly been surrendering to the fact that any and all of the most meaningful experiences in my life come from small interactions with people or from the art they create, so why shouldn’t I try to bring myself closer to them whenever possible?
This weekend, I socialized a good bit more than I usually do, and at an event, I noticed myself struggling to focus on any given conversation I was a part of because there were so many different people that I was interested in meeting with or talking to. Somehow, I was having FOMO for the event that I was already at, wondering what it would’ve been like to talk to all of the people in the room that I recognized but hadn’t formally met.
I chided myself for not giving enough attention to the people that I was talking to, thinking about how I would come across. For a moment, I was mentally transported to a younger version of myself, one where I sought to learn how to be charismatic by unnaturally following sets of steps to try and get people to like me. At that time, I just wanted to feel normal enough to have friends, but I eventually shed most of those steps as it felt like it made other people feel like objects of desire, a thing to be acquired rather than a being to be experienced.
During the function, I was drawn into conversations and forgot about my FOMO. I was pulled into the experience of simply being with other people and forgot about whatever else was going on around me. Maybe the repeated strangeness of my past efforts had finally taught me a lesson — people are like beautiful vistas, meant to be appreciated and experienced, rather than earned.
Ever since, I’ve been trying to talk to strangers more, whether it was the person journaling at the electronic show in the park, or the Lyft driver who told me about living through the 1968 Mexican Student Movement. With repetition, I’m slowly becoming more open to the world.
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
SINGLES - “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” by Sufjan Stevens - one of my most beloved artists has an album coming out soon, but also is suffering from an autoimmune disorder, so keep our sad king in your thoughts!
FILM - Babylon (2022) - insane movie that is over-the-top and imperfect, but beautiful! Brad Pitt’s performance was incredible.
POEM - “Brother” by Gboyega Odubanjo - “it’s funny because the world is /
burning this day is another”
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Today I came across writing I did 6 years ago and found it cringe worthy, but found I still have the same sarcastic tone in my writing, which I realise is my identity and serves me well. No doubt I’ve repeated that throughout anything I’ve written. I think combining repetition with the insane amount of courage it takes to honestly review previous work, whether that’s written or a video of yourself (ergh) is a great formula for improving.
Love the sub header btw! And the page! Found you on my discovery.