Layered Learning

From the desk of Teresa Jordan, Executive Director – I learned how to put on make-up on the GO train about five years ago. Okay, that is not exactly true, but to be clear, my mom did not really wear make-up and mascara seemed straight forward to me – you move the brush in an upward motion along the lashes and try not to poke your eye out and you end up with a luscious dark lash of alluring texture.

Taking the GO train on a Saturday morning, I could not help but notice a young woman a few seats away who was applying mascara. In this case, ‘applying’ was a very different verb from the one that I had been enlisting all the years prior. She repeatedly applied the wand to the lash and then back in the tube and then back to the same lash – from the Ajax station to Eglinton. Repeatedly, she carefully built a layer of luscious allure like I have never even imagined possible. I was in awe at her dedication and not once did she tear up due to jabbing her eyeball or have to wipe away errant makeup from her cheek.

This was an epiphany! You can use the wand more than once to build up layers! My
mind was blown and I changed my habit the next day. And while the world failed to notice, I know that my luscious lashes have plumped up to a most dramatically alluring fashion since.

Learning is not something that you book time for from 9-11 on Thursdays or something that you are somehow finished with at a certain stage of the game. Be on the lookout – strangers, friends, coworkers and yes, even fellow travellers on the train – have a little bit of knowledge that could be important to making a new discovery about yourself, a new insight into the world or a completely revamped and invigorated beauty routine. So much is all around, just waiting to be noticed, taken in or considered.

For all you do, before, in and beyond an ice storm, I offer my thanks!