I was watching a video for class last night and came to realize that Henry Giroux's statement "different contexts require different interventions" explains my way of interacting with people into perspective. (it also sounds kind of like Zapatismo's call for plural worlds--- the one in Chiapas and the one I am supposed to be creating here in my own community...) I think this assists me in understanding why i like talking and communicating to people so much. Each response can be completely different in form (existence), but always I am trying to speak directly from my self (essence). And when you can bring forth your essence to the world it is a tremendous experience. Love and true understanding can be realized here in the process of manifesting our essence into existence. If we always leave what is deeply felt inside then what is most important to us will never exist.
What motivates and interests me most is how things are being done, which includes how one is thinking about the things that s/he is doing. In the context of a group meeting I am more concerned with how people feel when together then what is being discussed or determined in the meeting. "Pushing through" a meeting in order to 'get things done,' can prevent the members gaining a potentially rewarding experience. Instead of an action being decided upon in the disembodied space of our heads, the decided motion should be contingent upon the collective feeling in that moment. An action based in feeling is much more likely to be characterized as "something that sustains us" then "something we have to do."
As a college student group interaction is only part of my life and is normally outside what gets classified as school work. It has been my struggle for the past 3-4years to create a space for personal meaning within the practice of learning. A potential point of self-expression is within my writing, but the question comes up "who is my audience?" Without an audience that can appreciate the substance of my writing, it becomes devoid of meaning---- meaning can only be found in cultural of context of 'learn and you will be able to get a job; which will allow you to function in soceity.' Professors are supposed to grade us on our content, but separately from whether or not the piece moved them. In this model a professor is not 'moved' to learn with his students---a crucial component of popular education. For the most part when I write, I start off really caring about what I have to say but then cannot quite finish the assignment. In the end I force myself to finish the assignment, but by this point I don't care what I wrote anymore. These constraints ultimately discourage and dis-empower me.
Before writing this I just starting thinking that a may be able to make my writing meaningful and coherent if I form it as a response. Within service-learning (I don't like this term) classes writing is based off of our experiences. Outside of this context, maybe I should respond to my 'experience' with a text and then add outside research to supplement it. Reading this back to myself now, I feel like it is a very obvious conclusion to come to, but why has it taken me so long to come to this point of epiphany?
A response involves a relationship: me to myself, me to you, me to culture, me to nature, me to a text. To change our relationship to the world, we must first interpret our relationship with it and second respond to it. This is a process combining theory and action - praxis.
