This past Saturday I got to go to the Natural History Museum with my cousin, her husband and their 2-year-old daughter. If you haven’t had the chance to go to a cool museum with a 2-year-old guide, I can only tell you that it makes even a great museum outstanding. Mostly because they view the exhibits with an energy and excitement of an entire lifetime bottled up in a tiny little body. And they are looking at everything not from the vantage point that you usually see everything, but instead from their vantage point at about 3 feet tall, and they are taking in everything that they can take in just within an arm’s reach. We think of just within reach as a small distance—as the opposite of a big accomplishment. But it turns out— an entire universe lives just within an arm’s reach.

The 2-year-old went from exhibit to exhibit looking at what she could reach—with her arms, with her eyes: dioramas at her height, a bronze statue of a little boy and any button she could push. She looked at bigger things that her mom or dad held her up to see—the dinosaurs, the elephant, the whales. But what really captivated her was within her reach—was something that she could go to and leave and come back to on her own.

The ability to approach it and then walk away, and then turn right around and go back, as if seeing it for the first time again. Some of the things were part of the displays and some of the things were just the stairs or the structures of the building. What mattered most was what she could figure out from it. What mattered most was that it was in scale with her learning, and within reach of her ability to take it in and try to figure it out. If she could reach out and touch it, or run to and away from it, all the better.

Just within reach. In case you are wondering, this isn’t my usual motto. Mine is more along the lines of that cheesy inspirational poster:  “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough” which I confess I wrote on a 3 X 5 card and pinned above my desk.  But two-year-olds are such serious gurus of learning that I was struck by the difference of her approach to what was new and interesting to her, and my typical approach to what I am trying to do in the world. I began to wonder what it would mean to appreciate the learning and the reaching that was just within reach.

Just within reach doesn’t mean it’s easy to get or too hard to get. It’s a stretch, but a fun stretch. A challenging, but do-able stretch. It’s a lesson I seem to need to learn over and over again. And just within reach means that you are taking in more of what’s really happening in front of you, near you—in the moment—than the bigger demands that loom larger in our minds.

What does learning just within arm’s reach mean for an adult? I think it means first slowing down and being in the present moment. Feeling your feet on the floor. Taking a deep breath. Listening more carefully to the conversation. It means appreciating the smaller practices and goals of the work you are doing: the sketches, the drafts, the brainstorming, the first attempts.

What’s so impressive is that little kids come programmed to learn with a sustainable strategy or practice that’s filled with kindness and fun. They instinctively know to make it easier if it’s too hard, and to make it harder if it’s too easy. They know to do it again and again. They know when it’s time to shift to something else. And I think that their blueprint for learning is exactly what’s needed for growing—for healing. To lean into those things you are learning that are just within reach.

The thing about an arm’s reach is that it is exactly the words we use to describe being in relationship—being connected. Reaching out. And this is what working within an arm’s reach gives you—it means you are building a relationship with what you are learning. And more importantly you are building a relationship with yourself –the self that is learning. It means that you are curious and open to surprises about what you are learning—and you are curious and open to surprises about yourself.

Just within arm’s reach is incremental learning. It’s not about being great at something, it’s about getting better at something. It’s about being able to stay in a hard conversation longer, or stick with a tough problem longer. It’s about trying something new, or having the patience to stick something out. It’s about letting yourself be awkward, be loud, or be quiet. Or sit still, or get moving—or whatever is just within reach for you.

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD