On the Quantum Nature of Education

I keep bumping up against the fallacy of reductionism as I stretch to find the words that define my learning process. I am a wave AND a particle; sometimes I work with trajectories, while at other times I am fully in each particular moment of NOW. When I focus on one, the other becomes difficult to fathom. In each now, attention is what matters, being present before it all slips away into a never-ending progression of moments. But without trajectory, there is no story and no context. These are essential to meaning, learning, and connection. Focus too much on trajectory, however, and it is easy to become ungrounded and unpresent.

When I am learning best, I am fully engaged in process, not in describing that process. Something is lost in translation when I look to pin down my experience into some sort of tangible shape. Yet this is necessary in order to fully integrate that which I learn, to reflect and consider this process in context.

It seems that an important lesson is that learning is organic, and rarely conforms to modern notions of time, haste, efficiency, production, or regularity. It is more like a tide, alive with a billion unknowable presences.

I am trying to find the patterns in my experience, looking for a framework to measure my balance by. I keep trying to overlay various systems upon my experience: Five Element Theory; Bloom's Taxonomy; Glasser's Five Basic Needs; the Chakras; the Four Elements; the Four Directions; the Kabbalah; Multiple Intelligences. None of these are complete on their own, but each system brings a certain palette and texture to self-observation that can be used to propel further growth and understanding.