Well, the years start coming and they don't stop coming |
Such a notion flies completely in the face of the educational expectations we bring into the classroom, both as teachers and students. How could it be valuable to see the need to understand as a detriment, that is, a hindrance rather than an asset when learning to write?
Consider that our performance as writers has less to do with understanding, that is, less to do with grasping the reasons for why you are doing what you have to do, and more to do with guessing courageously. Following this train of thought, if we regard the ability to write well as dependent on knowing in advance how to write, then we more often than not fret and stall at the threshold of making our marks, avoiding having to make the kinds of decisions that we would then share with audiences both familiar and strange. | I take "understanding" to be grasping the reason or cause behind a change to a situation. We are always doing this, and the quality of our understanding of our selves and the world is limited by our assumptions that we are operating by virtue of the true reasons. So, if we lack the "true" reasons (reasons about which we can feel certain), we cannot so easily act. |
For instance, when you go to write a blog as part of a class assignment: it's a strange experience. Believe me I know. I mean, what would compel us to invest time and real effort into something that may not impact anybody? A common problem with blogs. Maybe it's our unwillingness to go through all the moves we've got to make: we want to know what to do, and how to do it (right), before we go do something that very well may be ignored beyond the online community of the writing class.
Hesitating, we deliberate over what will happen if we fail, or how we will deal with rejection and how unpleasant that might be. And being busy doing what it takes merely to avoid looking bad, we don't even consider what is truly the more threatening consequence: how will we handle things if we are successful? | |
Think about a time when your writing made something happen within a group of people. How far did you take it? How many people participated? Were all of you performing in ways that moved the conversation forward? Maybe something like Facebook, or Instagram, or comments on a political blog, or a blog devoted to sports or entertainment. How long is your longest conversation? How many words? (copy and paste into a word or google doc and let it count the words for you). What do you think are the reasons for it turning out the way it did?
I believe that taking "leaps"--when we don't already know how, or what the consequences will be--opens us up to learn, to own what seemed strange and unapproachable, and to get freed up around what it means to adapt rhetorically to what we think audiences expect from us. Perhaps a different kind of understanding emerges, the kind of understanding that is practical and rhetorical (that is, skilled in guessing courageously), and gives access to reflecting on what happened, access to articulate why and how it happened. This secondary--after the fact--understanding is awesome, and that sort of understanding is desirable in this course; but from another point of view, what if this understanding is kind of a curse, especially because understanding "after the fact/act" does not necessarily bring us ease? We have to question whether understanding buys us anything as we approach future acts.
| One maxim that has been cited and retweeted numerous times is from Kierkegaard: "Life is understood backwards, but lived forward." One meaning to take from this is: no understanding that you acquire concerning what happened will change the fact that we are still forever in the dark about how to deal with what's next. |