Originally posted at Salihabava.com/academic on November 21, 2010
Henry Miller said, “Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood.” Like children there is a certain degree of play in unfamiliar or challenging situations as we learn, innovate and construct the conventions for human interactions. These forms of improvisation and play are the ways we perform and become relational beings in our everyday lives and contexts such as personal relationships, teaching, business, research etc. There is a playful cliché in Hindi which states,
Understand understanding with understanding, because to understand understanding, is also an understanding.
This brain and tongue twister is the playful performance of the human activity we call understanding. And if we turn to Hugh Prather we find ourselves at another playful twist. He says, “’You’re wrong’ means “I don’t understand you”- I’m not seeing what you’re seeing. But there is nothing wrong with you, you are simply not me and that’s not wrong.”
So the question arises how do we construct our everyday lives with these twists and turns? One way is to think of it as performance. How do you construct understandings, understanding that understandings are also constructed? (LOL)
