Here’s a quote:
“Through learning, one becomes more oneself.”
Does this have any meaning for you? Leave your response and a short explanation in the comment section below. I’ll add my own thoughts at the end of the weekend. I’ll also provide the source of the quote.
Note: You can think about what this means if you have, or someone you know has, Parkinson’s disease.
Or you can think about other situations, like learning how to bake bread, or leaning a new language, or learning a song, or learning to swing a bat….
Update:
The quote comes from The Universe of Babies, by Caleb Gattegno. On page 153 he discusses how young children learn games and other things from older siblings. Many of these things are things the younger child can’t do just yet, but are examples of “the future descending into the present.”
To quote directly from Gattegno:
It is in this sense that we hold that, through learning, one becomes more oneself. The potential is actualized.
But not any potential, only that which is ripe for realization.
This perspective brings together the facts of life, an understanding of growth in the world, a place for the co-existing generations, the shifts of consciousness from one occupation to another, the variety and sameness of human experience on Earth.
Why did I include this quote as a blog entry? I just think that now that I’m on the road with Parkinson’s disease, it behooves me to embrace it and learn as much as I can about it, so I can become more myself…whatever or whoever that is.
When I first sent out announcements about this blog to my friends and acquaintances, I wrote that I hoped the blog would be both serious and kind of jokey. And a friend from high school, whom I haven’t seen since 1971, responded that that’s how I was in high school: serious and jokey.
So in this way I’m becoming more myself, by reading about PD, watching videos, and digesting it all through writing….and jokes.
This is an interessting thought. I know that when I became “good” at playing sax in my high school band (the band coach said I was astonishing), I became more confident and I “knew” myself better. I knew this even before the coach started saying I was astonishing. Learning to play the sax well put me at the top of my game in many aspectts of my life.
At first, I couldn’t think of anything I’d learnt to become really, really good at. Then I remembered learning to pull up just one carrot in a row without disturbing the other carrots on each side. To begin with, I’d give a firm pull and end up with the green tops in my hand and the carrot still in the ground.
So I pulled less and didn’t break off the tops but the carrot was still in the ground. So I’d get out the trowel and dig it out but the little carrots on either side would be dug out too and so never grow to become big carrots.
I found I had to do it without thinking about “pulling” – just by being sensitive to the carrot, holding the tops and “wishing” it out. I had to put just a tiny bit of attention on the carrot – if I looked at it that was too much. I had to look elsewhere – at the sky, the rest of the garden and then, the carrot would slowly begin to move. I’d often get excited at that point and start pulling… and the tops would break off.
It took me a whole season but eventually I could nearly always manage to get the carrot out. Not always because as soon as I started thinking “I’m clever at this now” I’d stop being sensitive to the carrot and end up with just the tops.