“I can’t learn this stuff, I’m taking too long.”

I heard this a lot when I was working on my Bardic lessons from the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. And I could truly understand the frustration, as well as the bitterness over the constant stopping and starting that was taking place while trying to learn. The slow pace was being compounded by everyday life getting in the way. Having to work late. Yard work. A constant need to bring work from the job back to the home, just to get caught up. I understood the frustrating nature quite well. That’s because the person experiencing those troubles was me.

When I got my lessons in the mail from OBOD, I always did my best to get through them before the next mailing would arrive. Life; however, had a different plan. When I started, I was an adjunct instructor for the college. Typically, I had anywhere from twenty to nearly a hundred students whose assignments I had to continually read, grade, correct, and comment on before I returned the assignments. Then, I accepted a position as an Institutional Researcher for the college, which removed me from the classroom. I lived less than two miles from the campus I taught on. My new job put me on the main campus, which was a forty-five minute drive – one-way. In the summer-time, the college went to four days a week of work. Each of these days was ten hours of work. My entire time was raised to nearly fourteen hours per day with the driving in rush hour traffic. That meant I essentially woke up, made breakfast, drove to work, did my job, drove back, made dinner, and went to sleep. The next three days – Friday, Saturday and Sunday – were typically reserved for housework, yard work, medical appointments and any other errands that needed to be taken care of. So to alleviate all of that, I moved to be closer to the job. Getting things together for the move, that all ate into the time that I had to complete my studies as well, until I had developed a routine of setting my studies to the side. See? Life got in the way.

When I made it to the first OBOD Gulf Coast Gathering camp, there was a meeting setup for all the Bardic students. Here, I found a few others had struggled with the balance of mundane life and studies while others seemingly had no problem. I learned a few techniques to getting things completed, but one notation stuck with me: everyone learns at their own pace. There is no time limit to the lessons because of this. You learn at your own pace. And that currently is a reminder to me as I work through my Ovate studies, which are decidedly not as much as the Bardic studies were. That presents a new set of challenges to my mind. Getting through lessons that have a much weaker call to me.

Don’t get that statement wrong. I am not about to stop on my Ovate studies. I am merely indicating that the challenge of making it through these studies comes from a different place than before. And as I did make it through my Bardic studies, I will make it through my Ovate studies. I am finding that I need to determine a different perspective to get there.

Most people, it seems, look at the course work and see a daunting set of lesson plans set before them. A booklet of material that is broken down into what feels like a set of lesson plans. And seemingly an internal self-realized clock that says – you can do it in a year. Maybe that needs to be changed to: you SHOULD do it in a year because I never found anything that suggested that I should complete my studies in any specified time frame. “Everyone learns at their own pace.” My firm belief is that this is where folks develop a mental road block, that they feel they must overcome. When they don’t – because Life gets in the way – they become paralyzed, not knowing what to do and their abaility to progress is just shot.

I can understand where this comes from. In all the schooling that we have had – there’s a time limit for everything. Lessons have deadlines to be submitted. Tests have a specified time frame in which they must be completed. You must move forward each year within grade progression: first grade, second grade, ninth grade, until you graduate with a high school diploma. Yearly progression matters for everything. In college, you get a number of courses you must complete before moving on to the next progression of courses, until you meet all the requirements for your degree. If you fail, you get held back, and your graduation date gets pushed back another semester, because you have to complete that course with a satisfactory grade. Deadlines. Submission dates. Course start dates. Course end dates. Expected graduation dates. All of that leads to dealing with deadlines in the work place. You begin to live your life under a set of self-imposed deadlines. Things have to be done by this date. And this becomes the default for how you handle your life and it creeps into your new-found learning: your Druidry studies.

Except that you don’t have to approach it that way. Learning Druidry, Wicca, whatever Spiritual path you are on is not about the grade or title you attain. Yeah, I’ve made it past my Bardic grade. I’m on my Ovate grade. I have a desire to finish the Ovate grade and progress to the Druid grade. I have a desire to finish that….for what? Yes, I get to say that I am a Druid that completed the OBOD coursework for the three grades. But is that what I am trying to attain? Some sort of bragging rights?

Certainly, working through the three grades is an important part of my Spiritual Path. And yes, I will have a manner of fulfillment at finishing the three grades. But it won’t make me any more important than I am now. It may place me in a position where I can get a chance to work with other OBOD folk going through the courses, to help guide them towards fulfilling their own goals and desires over what the coursework is for. As a former instructor, I always loved the moments where I saw students’ have that little light of understanding get “turned on.” Always a great feeling, especially when I got them to understand that I didn’t turn their light on – they did. I only helped them to understand where they might find that switch within themselves. But that’s only a side desire of doing my work in the grades. My first desire is to become a better “me” through the work. To learn and experience what I can through the course work. This is about altering aspects of myself into something that I want to become.

I have a desire to be a Druid and I am one. This is my Path. No title is going to make me into a Druid. I already am a Druid. The course work is going to help me become a more effective, more knowledgeable Druid. And my progression towards effectively working on myself through the lessons, through the camaraderie that I have with other Druids I encounter at OBOD camps, Pagan Pride Days, and other gatherings…that will happen on schedule. At my pace. I still have other requirements in my everyday life that I need to continually address. My work, my everyday life at home, my position as a friend in the lives of others, being there for those that need that shoulder to lean on or that ear to bend….all of that is me. But I continue to learn about my Druidry, how it relates to me, how it relates to the world around me…and even after I finish my Druid grade with OBOD, my learning will continue through the rest of my life, and beyond the veil when I pass (which I hope is a long, long time from now).

This Path is about constantly experiencing, learning and evolving. Deadlines be damned. I build myself at my pace. Sometimes, I need to stop and take a break. Short or long, that break will be something that I needed, so that I could refresh my perspective. So that I could see the world with fresh eyes. The pace I set on this Path is mine. Some people want to sprint down the Path. Good for them. They are doing what they feel they need to. For me, I prefer to walk down the path at what others may lament is a leisurely pace. I like to stop from time to time, lean on my staff, and take in the view around me. No matter the landscape, I can find beauty in it. And beauty needs to be experienced and admired. Those moments are certainly necessary. We walk (or sprint as the case may be) our Paths at our own paces. So, the next time you are having trouble with learning a guitar passage for a song you want to add to your musical quiver….set the guitar down. Take a break. Come back to it in a bit with fresh eyes and fresh fingers. Having trouble with a bit of programming. Save the code where you are at. Document where you are, so you can recall what you were trying to do when you come back. Put on a movie and lose yourself in the story’s experience. Or get some much needed sleep. Do something to give your mind a break. However long that break may be.

Stop trying to live your entire existence on a set of self-imposed deadlines. There will always be deadlines in parts of our mundane life. That doesn’t mean we have to impose those deadlines elsewhere. I’ve been there. I have done that. Trust me, its an empty existence. You rush through everything trying to reach those deadlines and zoom right past the real knowledge in those lessons – OBOD, Life or otherwise – and you miss something that you needed. It took my seven years to get through my Bardic Grade. The first four years, I struggled with the lessons, going back and forth in the lessons so that I could understand. “We all learn at our own pace.” I spent the last three years taking my time and learning at my own pace. At first it felt frustrating moving so slow, but soon I fell into the rhythm that worked for me. Eventually, I finished, and found myself looking into the Path of Ovate, where I find myself learning more deliberately. While the lessons are not what stirs my soul, it is knowledge that I need to work with, accumulate and accustom myself to. I work and experience at a pace appropriate for me. Deliberate steps on an appropriate Path. Taking the time to stop and marvel at the beauty all around me. “We all learn at our own pace.”

–T /|\