« rhetoric and debate or saving your bacon | Home | midwife syndrome »
Accidental Kismet
By audhill | January 16, 2008
I’m reading Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi right now. In the section I am reading, Csikszentmihalyi describes a young man by the name of Sam who has had an accidental experience that will define the rest, or at least a large portion, of his life. Up until the moment described, Sam has been an ordinary teenager with no interests outside of the norm. He had no goals other than the goals that pretty much any other boy of his age and social environment might want. That is, until he went with his father scuba diving on a coral barrier in Bermuda. That single event transformed him. He was so mystified and enchanted by what he experienced that he took bio courses in high school, went to college and then on to grad school for marine biology.
…[O]nce he became aware of what went on undersea, Sam liked it — the experience resonated with previous things he had enjoyed doing, with feelings he had about nature and beauty, with prioriteis about what was important that he had established over the years…. Thus he built this accidental event into a structure of goals — to learn more about the ocean, to take courses, to go onto college and graduate school, to find a job as a marine biologist — which became a central element of his self. From then on, his goals directed Sam’s attention…” (Flow, pg 35)
I found this study on a person to be revealing of the way in which a person finds purpose in their life and equally instructive in the way in which purpose is lost. It sounds, as well it might, that the key to Sam’s self discovery was choice. He was able to do something he loved and therefore was transformed. One conclusion might be that we are charged to make learning and experience enjoyable for children so that they might love what they experience and therefore choose ways to make a meaningful existence for themselves. Some others might say that this story points to the superiority of doing over telling in the learning process. Still others would say that the key is an enriched curriculum. Sam’s interests could not have been stoked in a test prep culture where support for a broad range of interests was not available.
So what did this serendipity consist of? A series of events and internal choices had to occur for Sam to make the choice to pursue marine biology rather than, say… to pursue a path of respectable, financially renumerative boredom. One choice was to have an enjoyable experience. But prior to that, he had already been inculcated in a family culture that made much of nature and beauty. By implication, this was not Sam’s first opportunity to experience reverence for and active exposure to nature. To some extent, we might say that the experience fell on a rich soil that had been previously prepared for it.
Similarly, Sam goes on to take bio courses in high school and college. Factually, there is much in learning that is arduous and even rote. One does not pass a bio regents merely on love of the natural world. Successful navigation of SATs, college essays, GREs is not accomplished merely by invoking passion and enjoyment. Therefore, it must also be true that Sam could work towards a goal that included the necessity to do many things that he had no desire to do.
What does it mean that Sam was prepared by a family and an educational system that broadened his life experiences? Why is it important that he was able to delay gratification in order to achieve a greater goal that he valued? Have we have gone down a wrong road for many of our children.? We want to empower them, but it seems that we empower too early, lending strength to posture over substance and whim over intention. Rather than insist that they experience their world, we often allow them to avoid it. In order to have a success story like Sam’s, we must identify what kind of empowerment is necessary and when it is necessary. In fact, we need to redefine empowerment as a forward moving process comprised more of access and opportunity than merely of choice. We should be empowering children with experiences (positive and negative: a scube diving trip can transform a life, but so can learning to cope with frustration or continue in the face of failure). Until we help them to exercise their risk muscle that will benefit them when they are actually able to make real choices. We need to give them the tools and experiences that will enable them to expand their identities and empower them to risk becoming more meaningful version of themselves.
Topics: Uncategorized |