Tag: education

A never-ending lust for learning

“What are you up to?”

“I’ve been doing homework, or pre-reading for class”

“Oh, that sucks”

“No, it’s really exhilarating!”

It’s true though, despite the looks of confusion I get.  I love to learn.  I love the feeling of stretching my mind to add in new concepts and ideas.  To storing knowledge away knowing that there will come a time where one piece of it will provide that perfect ah ha! moment, that click as I solve a puzzle.

While most of the people I surround myself with seem to enjoy learning and growth in some way, the folks I interact with that are part of society as a whole often just shy away from it entirely.  I grew up in a household where my parents read the paper every day, delighting in some new article about a topic they hadn’t heard of before.  I have a lot of privilege in that way.  While most parents struggle to make ends meet and get enough sleep after their two or more jobs, mine were talking me to performances and plays.  I wonder how much of my absolute lust for knowledge comes from them.

Kelev brings up a few new movies he got when we talk on the phone before bed.  He loves watching documentaries, especially about history or famous figures.  His favorites seem to be the ones that show a side you never really expected.  He’s like an eager puppy digging up a favorite bone when he finds some new treasure trove of knowledge about an event or person who we all thought we knew and took for granted.  I love watching how excited he gets, I can practically see his tail wagging and his exuberance is contagious, soon I’m wagging along with him.  I’m happy that a lifetime of shitty retail jobs and mind numbing tv shows, of institutionalized education in a fucked up school system, hasn’t killed his curiosity.

James shares an article with me, something he read that really spoke to him.  It’s intriguing, and some of the concepts require I read over it for a third time to really begin to grasp them.  We discuss it, coming at it from very different perspectives, and I’m grateful that it didn’t just show up on my feed one day.  Reading it has already stretched my mind, but hearing how he views on it pushes me even further.  I’m thankful for that moment of growth, it invigorates my whole day.

I eagerly share it with Hoffy, and am surprised when he reads it right away and discusses it with me.  I am still getting used to having partners who are so interested in what I share with them.  Our minds tend to work in a more similar way.  With James, I was stretching to get another perspective, with Hoffy, there is more of a shared understanding.  It feels like home, and it cements a strong foundation, so when we talk about what we are thinking, we can keep building upward together on our own discoveries.

I continue to pass on threads of the conversation to Kyuu or to Witty.  I discuss it with Kelev as we talk before bed.  I learn more from each person and delight in how my day is just filled with that bright happy light of discovery and innovative thought.  I remember how I felt so numb, with drinking, with depression.  This is the opposite of numb.  This is growth, this is wonder, this is what I think of when I think of education.

It is back to schoolwork the next day and the feeling persists.  What I’m learning in nursing school isn’t often of the same nature as an article shared to me about communication styles or societal power structures. It isn’t the same as a documentary with a whole new take on a historical event that gives you insight into the minds of another culture or country in that snapshot of history.  It has the same glow though.  One day I will be teaching what I’m learning to a patient, or discussing it with a fellow nurse, and someone will say something that expands my perspective on it in another burst of light. I still have a lust for such learning after all this time, it will persist through my whole life.  So yes, I am excited to do my homework, I’m excited for just about everything these days.  The more experience and knowledge I can pack in my brain the better, and while I’m sure I’ll need periods of relaxation and silence again soon, I’m immersing myself happily in the hubbub of learning and growth right now, and I feel at home there.

Writing from the heart

Today is just a bit of a ramble really, since the holiday season is busy and I don’t know that I have time this morning for a well thought out piece of writing.  This assumes of course that the rest of my writing is well thought out, a debatable assertion.  Today I’m thinking about communication, and methods of communication.  I’m doing a lot of research into non-violent communication, decision making methods, and facilitation, as part of my work to found an intentional community.  I also have been thinking about writing styles.

One of my partners, Kelev, frequently gets many positive comments on his writing that he publishes on fetlife, a sort of kinky version of facebook.  When we go to munches, he is often told how much his writing was enjoyed and really touched people.  Kelev is sometime with very little high school education, who doesn’t read, and who has a vocabulary that is expanding because he loves learning new words, but is limited at least in his writing because more verbose wordage does not come to him at those times.  I sometimes find myself contrasting that with my own writing style, which can get a bit verbose at times, although not by intention.  I have always been a reader of ALL the things, and so when I sit down to write, large words that are often uncommon in my daily conversation, manifest in my brain as my sentences materialize.  They come unbidden because my writing center must be quite buddy-buddy with my reading center, so the wordage I’ve absorbed in book just translates itself into my writing.  In fact, since I have learned much of my vocabulary from context, when I am writing I often find myself typing out a word unbidden because it feels like it should fit next, and then having to look up the definition just to check that I am sure of it’s correct meaning.  I don’t force in big words, but they just lend themselves to how my mind likes to write, they come naturally.  And I’ve noticed in this writing venture, the way I speak has also begun to incorporate itself, something I have not found previously when I write.  My writing sounds like a mix of the product an affluent childhood filled with many books, and the speech patterns of a pissed off punk-rock millennial.  Kelev on the other hand does not write so eloquently.  His writing is simple, but conveys great enthusiasm.  While in life, his speech mannerisms are mostly wry sarcasm, movie quotes, and puns, his writing is very much exuberant yet simple.  In thinking about it, I realize why it appeals to people so much.  It isn’t the simplicity of it that makes it easy to read.  It is that his ability to really convey an intensity of emotion makes his writing truly embody what he was feeling at the time.  He writes from the heart where as I write from the mind.

I know that I could possibly work to change my writing style, though I love the feel of big dusty words that sit on shelves without frequent daily use, as they shake themselves off and meander from my brain through my fingers and onto the screen. I wish I could convey the same intensity of emotion and such a pure intense openness as he does.  I do try to create an emotional atmosphere when writing about meaningful events, but I can see how it is often cluttered up by the long running sentences that loop in and out of ideas a few times before ever reaching a point.  I am not a great writer, and by all accounts of most measurement, neither is he.  But he makes people feel, and I admire that.  Rather then change myself, I simply want to absorb all I learn from that.  Sometimes greatness does not come of education, or well honed communication skills, or the miles of research you do for a project.  Sometimes greatness is not the objective at all. When you write from the heart, all that really matters is that you set your feelings free out into the world in their truest most simple form, and sometimes on their way out there, they will touch someone else.