Bringing down the walls: Learning from within

I’ve recently started a unit through Open Universities Australia from Murdoch Uni, SSK12 How to Study and University. The information and learning have been fantastic. And whilst the title may sound like an easy way to gain 8 credit points, the information is interesting, informative and designed help an individual begin to grasp how the University environment requires them to think.

The unit requires reflection on your personal learning as you progress through weeks. Part of the challenge to participants, and this includes me, is not just the new information and skills we need to grapple with, but the idea that we need to examine our own thoughts as we travel through. I think about thinking regularly, but I still find this a challenge. If I am to reflect on my own thoughts, I need to be honest enough with myself to look behind the shallow walls that I have erected through my life.

We all build walls and facades in our thinking and filter information through the experiences and prejudices that we carry with us on this journey. The classic line in communication of “People don’t hear what you say, they hear what they think you said” bears out the reality of the previous statement. The question I find myself forced to ask is, “Is it only what I hear said to me or is it my own thoughts that I filter through these same beliefs, prejudices and world views?” I’m sure Freud and Jung would both say, “Yes!” There underlying beliefs for doing so might differ, but they would agree on the point I’m sure.

So I find myself thinking about the how honestly I am answering the reflective questions. I have found myself typing words on a page about goals and reflections and asking, “Is this really true? It seems so trite, so shallow.” I feel like I’m getting the words out, but questioning their connectedness to my deeper self. It feels strange to say in five years, “I will be participating in my Masters in IT in Education” when I am struggling to figure out how I pay my bills next week. Mind you, this is probably they whole point of the exercise to get me out of my immediate focus and dream about a bigger picture.

Maslow talks about his ideal of a Self-Actualised Individual that can live in the moment and take childlike delight in new things constantly being imbued with joy of new things discovered and having an immediate connection with their emotions. I can say, “I’m not there yet”.

One of the readings in the unit talked about how we define ourselves by what we are not or what we do not want to be. So what do I not want to be? Closed off, closed minded, disconnected, dogmatic, jargon spewing, thoughtless rhetoric junkie.

I find I can also define myself at least by a few things I am as well. I am a white male on a reasonable income in a society that values knowledge, decisiveness and action, goals to be recognised and achieved, hurdles to be jumped and rationality and coolness in the face of peril. I have learned through the trials of the school yard and the scorn of my peers to not show my emotions too openly or reveal my heart to freely. For unfortunately, like many boys growing up today, to show emotion is still a weakness and to be a man is to suck it up and keep on going.

I have learned to analyse and understand others positions and backgrounds and look beyond the pain immediately rendered and to empathise with my fellow travelers in this life. To a degree this has given me some very useful skills, one of which is to keep a cool head in conflict; accept that some things are beyond my fault, blame or control and therefore not worth adding to my baggage; that to understand is to be able to forgive though not forget; that forgiveness is always about the forgiver and not the forgiven.

The other side of the coin is to a degree my thoughts and emotion can sometimes be divorced from each other. I know that sometimes I analyse the pain I feel at a harsh word rather than feel the pain or watch from behind my eyes as I enjoy a moment. It is sometimes a strange self that makes up me, am I the watcher or the watchee? I don’t know, both at the same time is my guess.

This is not to say I don’t feel or live in the moment, I do as much as I am able. However, I find my joys are quiet joys as is my sadnesses. A small smile on my lips means deeper contentment and enjoyment than a deep belly laugh in the company of strangers. My griefs to a stranger may come out as aloofness. It’s not, I’m just wearing the face I have so I can deal with things in my own space. It has taken time overcome some of the conditioning of my past; to look at myself honestly; to gather friends I talk to and trust, that will grieve with me when I need, but also encourage, exhort and celebrate with in triumphs. And before anyone plays the depression card, I’m not. I happen to be having a moment of reflection that is all.

The walls I have worn externally to survive exist both in and out. The public world of display and the ones I have used to protect me inside. I say all this because to really understand myself as a learner, I am coming to the conclusions that I need to understand me as a person. I need to come from a place that knows where my own world views can impede my grasping a foreign concepts and know on which assumptions I base my thinking. There are beliefs I hold that I won’t change and there are some I will give on, but I need to know which ones are which. I may only discover them as I come face to face with new concepts and thoughts. I have to be honest enough within my own mind to know all these things exist.

The only way that I can come to a place of learning where the gaps are in my world view are filled is to be willing to drop my internal walls to myself and my feelings. Not that this is a bad thing, it isn’t. I really see that I can’t start learning from without until I start learning from within as well.