I have always wanted to do things the right way. I want to understand the process and execute on that process, step by right step until completion. Except life’s experiences aren’t straight lines. There is going to be trial and error.

Yesterday I started a sign language class.

Many of my readers may not know this but I grew up around deaf children (yes, deaf people have said it’s OK to call them deaf; they don’t like hearing impaired as a term to describe them.) Both my parents taught at the Cascade School for the Deaf, my mother retiring as the Principal of that school.

Playing with deaf children in my early childhood, I quickly picked up on the means to communicate with them – finger spelling – and we found a way to understand each other with gestures and facial expressions.

So yesterday, when I saw that one of the first things was the alphabet, I felt that I was already ahead of the class.

We were asked to spell our names, which was easy, as I had been doing this for years.

What came next threw me off centre when a group of 9 children ranging between the ages of 4 and 15 entered the classroom, sitting in a semi-circle facing us. They asked us our names. Easy. But when it was my turn to find out their names, I realized that me finger spelling and me interpreting someone else finger spelling, was a whole different game altogether.

Deaf children finger spell as fast as we speak. So for starters, I had to ask them to slow down, with the help of the teacher, of course! But still, I had difficulty discerning some letters of the alphabet.

I felt that at the very least I was on the right path to communicate effectively with deaf people, with the right answer, learn to fingerspell. But I realized yesterday that my mind needed so much more opening, around effectively communicating with the deaf.

In that room yesterday were nine different personalities. Interestingly, deaf people give each other a name sign. The name sign represents the person and is decided on by the local Deaf community but the tradition of giving name signs does more than just identify that person. It also signifies that the person is an integral part of the Deaf community. That means that most Deaf people have name signs. We have nine weeks to go, so they haven’t quite decided on my name sign yet, but after my first class, my mind has been expanded and can never return to wherever it was, up until 5 pm yesterday.

When the focus is on ‘RIGHT’ we can lose so much along the way. We can become so besotted with our own answers and ideas that we remain closed to what life is trying to teach us…trying to show us…so that our experience is that much richer.

The way to better understanding ourselves, our community and those we serve is to be genuinely curious and be willing to explore. Instead of the search for ‘right’ answers, decide on the questions you want to pursue. Life is full of ambiguity and contradictions so spend more time defining how you will approach whatever path you choose and as I discovered yesterday, having an open mind is almost always, the first step.