We can sometimes be at a loss for words. But being dumbstruck by life is not good enough. If we consider the potential situations have, we all can use the physical world of drawing and sketching to help move past the obvious. Above is a map of my thought process of how I think when it comes to dealing with boredom and other effects of stress.
Like the video from the connected courses website, sometimes its the little things that can add up to defeat our ability to think. But like how the speaker, David Foster Wallace, explains if takes will and effort to be able to look and think past the monotony of everyday life.
We have opportunities to see past the automatic decisions and possibilities. For example, I have lived in a dormitory for many years, as part of an academic community. Here, sometimes people are loud, and talkative, often late at night. I could let this get to me. I could let their fun night annoy me as I have to get up and perform my duties the next day.
But I don’t. I relax and lay there. Why Why do this? I do it because in that moment community members are bonding, and having fun. They are learning how to interact with others and gain friendships that last a lifetime. I could go out, being the ‘grumpy old man’ in the dorms and tell them to scatter off. But I don’t because the potential could be there to create new ideas.
So, why do we need a why?
Because we do not want to be without purpose. I certainly do not. I want to have the choice to think. Above is the how I have mapped my thought and my method of thinking. It’s how I do not let my possibly mediocre life get to me, and how I choose to combat blind certainty. But it is important to not get lost in abstract thought, but be in control of what I think.
It is the engagement in my life, that I do not idle in neutral and let it pass me by. I like to stay one step away from being completely overwhelmed by work and life. But I make sure the my obsessions do not define my life. Its that in-between that become my why.
My ‘why’ is to help others achieve what I will need to cultivate for the rest of my life: a meaning to what “their” form of Architecture is.
This is that I can help facilitate another’s thinking, to begin stripping off the monotony of a basic education, giving something that took me 24 years, 7 in higher education, to realize. We currently teach information, we instead need to teach information and understanding. With these two abilities, students will be able to synthesize knowledge which can protect them from the basic, the mundane in life.
Also if this knowledge yielded wisdom in the future it would be fantastic. Because I still do not know what that could be, or even should be.
Ken