I am a teacher to the bone. I enjoy teaching, but more importantly: I love seeing students learn. To see them understand something new, to manage a new skill, to have their horizons widened and understanding deepened: this is what I live by doing and love doing. Lucky me.
At the age of 44 I think am beginning to understand myself. At least a little better than when I was 14 or 24. This “me” that I know, however, is not static. She changes, develops, enters crisis and comes out of them a somewhat changed person. To understand such change, though, is to understand myself. And to understand the change in students when they develop – that is what the joy of teaching – and living – is all about.
I am also a parent. Seing my children grow, change, develop is scary and delightful. Much of what I think about my own life story and my own changes and developments relate to my children, more or less directly. Their changes change me, and mine change them.
Teaching, parenting, self-development: they all involve similar processes, albeit different to one another in many respects. I find they more often than not intertwine. This page is dedicated thoughts, reflections and experiences that have to do with change and development in human beings.
A theme which I really want to and need to adress, is the idea of perfection that I find an incredibly difficult idea to handle. On the one hand, I approve of ideals to strive for and be guided by. However, so often these ideals are false and destructive. And contemporary culture is, in so many ways, besotted by perfection. This is one of many themes I want to develop.
In this lies a critical aspect to what I am doing in my Krikonkraken project. I cannot deny that I am posing. I am trying my best to convey an image of perfection. I want everyone to think I am creative, fun, clever, reflected, wise and good. On the other hand, I don’t. I really and truly am fighting a fight against perfection. And I very much hope that I will be able to balance this in what I write. I’ll probably fail.
The image above represents the double movement of growth and destruction. Of strength and weakness, of power and vulnerability. Why these words are relevant to education, parenting and self development is something I want to explore.