Welcome to Yucan.co.uk's first blog post.
THE MISSION
My mission is to empower learning through a change in perspective from education as "a means to an end" to "a great adventure into the unknown"
Learning is not about what we memorise, but about how that knowledge changes us, empowers us, gives us a broader perspective, increases our repertoire of survival skills and ultimately makes us happier.
Happiness is not what happens to us, it is what we choose to feel, but often, we need to relearn the ability to exercise that choice.
We need to relearn because we are all born explorers. As children, we constantly look at the world around us in awe and wonder.
If we only think of learning as a means to an end, then we are missing out on enjoying the learning process itself.
If we don’t know how to enjoy what we are doing, irrespective of what the final result might be, we are wasting those precious moments of our lives.
The final result is only important in the context of the process. In other words, we choose the final result to give us a direction in which to move; as a means of preventing us from becoming stagnant.
If we spend our time not enjoying what we are doing in anticipation of the “reward” which may or may not come, we will miss out on the rewards that the opportunity is providing in the here and now, that is, during, and throughout, the learning process.
When we are playing games, or reading stories and going on adventures to exotic places, we are learning and yet, we don’t see it as that, we call it.”exploring” or “having fun”. When we refer to our experiences in this way, what we are really saying is that we are enjoying the process and are not suspending our enjoyment pending a particular result.
In summary, my mission is to spread the following message:
Let go of your attachment to the OUTCOMES (exam results, what others will think of you, Brownie points) that you have either chosen or have been imposed upon you and see those outcomes as a MEANS to motivate you (make you MOVE).
Notice that I am not saying, let go of the outcomes, only your attachment to them. This a common misinterpretation of a passage in Bible. It says, “the love of money is the root of all evil” (not what people often misquote this as, “money is the root of all evil”). In other words, as long as you see money as means to an end, you are fine, but as soon as you see it as a feature/measure/factor affecting your personal sense of identity, then you become its slave. The same goes for educational outcomes.
Epilogue:
The end does not justify the means:
(step aside, Mr. Machiavelli, or more to the point, misinterpretations of what he actually said)
The outcome does not justify the process (Just because I want to get a job that I enjoy, it doesn’t mean that I need to suffer in the process).
The means justifies the end: The outcome is itself a means to being involved in a process (I choose what I think is a job that I enjoy as a means to initiating a process that I am going to enjoy being involved in).
