We Go to Seek a Great Perhaps
An exercise in reflection from Digital Pedagogy Lab 2019 with Naomi de la Tour and Elena Riva — with inspiration provided by Ruha Benjamin.
It’s education (curiosity + kindness + action) which offers all of us new and ever-changing pattern potential; it offers each of us a substrate upon which to grow our unique stories and provides us with tools to connect these stories to the tragic and beautiful world around us. Without a curiosity as to why it is we search for patterns and why we tell stories, we can find ourselves clawing endlessly, desperately, for a deeper meaning and purpose.
It’s through this (perhaps troubling, perhaps promising) presupposition that education is, or perhaps can become, an existential coat or armor. Provided meaningful structures, which may consist of active destructuring, education offers us insight into our own pattern-seeking biology; an escape hatch away from fear and towards living a life of happiness, intrigue, and purpose.
It’s through this lifelong pursuit of acting upon our curiosities that we can discover a love for the process of living and growing, as opposed to searching for any singular point in time to define us. Education isn’t the road to a job or a specific salary. It isn’t a means to an end. Its purpose is to make the patternless patterned and bring stories and voices to the voiceless. Education at its essence is quite literally the ongoing act of creating a life worth living. I go to seek a great perhaps.
~ TK (with help from my cohort and friends)
As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. ~TMorrison
