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The car was perpendicular to the street, like the middle rung of a misplaced “H.” There were no signs of an accident. Everything was quiet. It was just...sitting there. I slowed down, grumbling to myself, late, and now later, to drop my daughter off at school. And then the out-of-place sedan slowly, slowly, began to inch forward. I’ve never seen a piece of machinery look so tentative. Traffic was starting to back up from either direction, although (miraculously) no one was honking.

The car, I realized, was from a local driving school. And then I saw the woman driving. She was probably 60 at the youngest, her hair covered with a headscarf, and she had a look on her face of sheer determination. She didn’t look scared, or embarrassed, or frantic, the way I would have surely felt were I driving not just the wrong way but the wrong, like, dimension. And something about her made me want to just jump for joy.

My irritation immediately melted away. This woman! She was doing it! She was learning to drive! It’s something most of us did without thinking twice (and without any sense of fear or danger) at age 15, a skill that now seems as ordinary as walking. And here was this woman, the world’s worst driver, inching her car towards an ill-fated parallel parking spot, concentrating so hard she didn’t even flinch when a taxi cab swerved around her.  In that moment I loved that woman, and that she was learning to drive, and that all sorts of (very slow-paced) driving adventures lay ahead of her.  We should all be so open to new ideas, new projects, new skills. Even if, at first, we really, really suck at them.

Here are some places to start:
7 Ways to Learn a New Skill
Learning for Fun