Recently, while focused on a routine task, I recognized a slightly dull and stuffy feeling in the head. Let's change the subject.

After my first year or two or three of school, I reflected for the first time on what was to come. Summer holidays afforded some "total freedom," but they were predictably temporary. Another year would come. Then another. And another. I could calculate the number of repetitions until I was finished with school. Even with a margin of error, it would be a very long time, and when it was finished, I would be an adult. I remarked to myself, "school takes up your whole life."

That kind of realization could be considered an introductory touch of sad sophistication to a child in early grade school. At that age, each year contains enough firsts to feel especially long, and so a dozen years seems many proverbial horizons away, a distance that might almost as well be forever. Whatever part of me was saddened by the realization wanted the freedom on the further side.

But it was only a touch sad, because I appreciated school and learned a great deal across many subjects, and each round of doing so began with the first day of school: the practice of finding the right room, entering, finding a seat, having the seat, taking a breath, and doing what little one can to "get ready to learn." It's the teacher's job to share truths, guidance and lessons, but the simple contribution of an open, clear and ready mind is an ingredient without which any further learning and growth will not occur.

This practice is rare and precious for a year-long home classroom, but the format upon my arrival in high school was about visiting various rooms around a campus, hour by hour, two terms a year. Less permanence, but twelve times the "first days of school."

It's been a long enough for this slightly stuffy feeling to remind me that it's been a while. The "whole life" that school "took up" is over, and I've had the freedom for some time – freedom which may prove even more precious than first days of school, but more easily squandered. There's as much room to wander as deeply into apathy as into curiosity and discovery. Have I remained in the habit of awaiting an external prompt?

If I want the feeling of the clean and unfamiliar room, the slight nervousness, the clear mind, the preconceptions suspended, and the readiness to learn again functioning as the critical ingredient, it's now my job to ask it of myself.