I once heard a statistician observe that the most important teacher in his life wasn’t the one who taught him the most math, but the one who taught him to love math. This made me realize that, if you want to teach people something in a way that will stick, teach them to love it. Most important skills aren’t taught to us. Rather, we self-teach them. Take riding a bicycle. Nobody really teaches you this, they just put you in a position to work it out on your own.
This certainly applies to my field of qualitative research. I can’t teach you how to do what I do. Sure, I can explain basic principles and skills. I can also show you how I do certain things, and I can describe how others do them. But ultimately, this is something you figure out for yourself, and that takes time and effort. If you truly love something, you’ll be willing to invest the years (or even decades) of work required to master it, and you’ll be able to weather the disappointments and failures you will inevitably encounter along the way.
So, this brings up two important questions:
1. How do you learn to love something?
2. How to you teach somebody to love something?
I’ve found there are two keys to learning to love something:
Begin with curiosity. If you’re eager to know about something, that’s a great place to start. But beware letting curiosity morph into pressure. That probably won’t help you learn to love something.
Take it slowly and give it time. Love at first sight might be common in movies, but it’s rare in real life. Allow your enthusiasm for something to grow and evolve over time. Sometimes love is a thing that builds inside of us, not something we find.
As for how to teach somebody else to love something, in addition to the above principles, there are a couple more things to remember:
Start with why, not how. Share your reasons for loving something, and don’t be shy about modeling your feelings and practices.
Let them struggle. Allow them to work through their suffering by themselves. Sometimes, we learn to love something after we’ve wrestled with it and made it our own. This goes back to the idea that most important skills are self-taught. So, don’t think of yourself as a teacher, but as a guide.
As St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century Dominican priest and philosopher, once wrote, “The things that we love tell us what we are.” Learning to love something yourself, and teaching others to love things as well, are valuable skills that will teach you a lot about you. Because, when you come to love something, it becomes a part of you.
You learn what you love.