Changing your mind is more interesting and more useful than changing your body

There are three requests I sometimes make of participants at the end of a workshop or class: tell me three things you learned, two things you’d like to know more about, one thing you changed your mind about. It’s good for students to be reminded that learning is an active process, and it’s useful for me see what they think is happening in class, which even after 25 years of teaching isn’t always what I think is happening.

I find these questions more widely useful. During lockdown, when it often felt as if nothing changed from day to day and week and week, I tried to start a family journal where we all answered them every day. Anyone who knows a teenager can probably imagine how well that went down, but sometimes some small glimmering of insight came through the clouds of adolescent cynicism, and my husband took the exercise charmingly seriously, sometimes seeking out some extra new knowledge or reason to change his mind about something when the day had not provided. I ask them of myself at the end of days that feel disappointing, and there are always at least some answers. Maybe I learned only that preparing my breakfast the night before means I’m more likely to start the day well, or that my neighbour’s mother is visiting from Arizona for the summer, or that another hotel has been burned down, but my understanding of the world isn’t quite the same as it was when I got up. Usually I’ve learned something about someone else that might help me to be a better friend or parent – my friend worries about the same thing that I do, or about something surprising to me; my child has a new interest or concern – and if I haven’t learned something about how I might be a better teacher, writer, cook, citizen or wife it’s probably because I wasn’t paying attention. We’re all learning and changing every hour whether we notice it or not. The point is to notice those changes, not to control them.

The question of what I’d like to know more about helps to direct my curiosity, and makes it more likely that I’ll look for answers rather than browsing knitting patterns or shopping online between bouts of work. They don’t have to be worthy topics; sometimes I want a deeper understanding of the history underlying breaking news so I can form a better opinion, but far more often I want to know the name of a bird or plant or why a once-beautiful building I pass has fallen into dereliction. The point is direction, not effort; presence, not striving.

The question about changing my mind is usually the most important. Especially in a society where people often have entrenched, tribal views about how things are and how they ought to be, the practice of changing our minds is a practice of hope. Someone else might be right about something. There might be new information or evidence or a new point of view, or maybe advancing age and experience give a new perspective. The process of changing your mind is never complete, and it can be uncomfortable. But I’m curious about the process and experience of revising an opinion, not political conversion. Liking food or colours or activities I once disliked (fennel, yellow and yoga) reminds me that preferences aren’t fixed; if fennel isn’t horrible after all, maybe other things I once loathed are worth another try. Over months of reading and reflection I changed my mind about how white people should think and speak about race. I changed my mind about whether and why a person might try to control her weight. I changed my mind about the merits of marking students’ work on paper and on screen. I find it hard to imagine that I will ever change my convictions about social justice, human rights and human responsibilities, but I often learn unexpected ways of practising or modifying those convictions.