Still Curious

27 gifts of life-changing learning and one radical conclusion - an audio essay | S3E9

• Danu Poyner • Season 3 • Episode 9

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If you could gift someone a life-changing learning experience, what would it be and why? We discuss the combined wisdom of 27 of my podcast guests and what it means for how we approach the practice of education.

Where, when, and how do moments of truly life-changing learning actually happen?

What do they look like?

When have you had a learning experience that actually changed your life?

If you think back through all the classes you’ve taken, the certificates you’ve earned, the books you’ve read, the films you’ve seen, the things you’ve tried, the places you’ve been, the people you’ve looked up to… what stands out most to you as a truly life-changing learning experience?

On my podcast, Still Curious, I talk to people who have somehow managed to keep their curiosity intact well into adulthood, despite the best efforts of the world around them. One question I ask everyone who comes on the show is: "if you could gift someone a life-changing learning experience, what would it be and why?"

I’ve been doing this for a little while now, and it’s always my favourite part of the show because I never have any idea what to expect, and the things that each person comes out with are often surprising, moving and profound.

When you put them all together, the overall effect is even more striking, and revealing.

So today I’d like to share the combined wisdom of 27 of my podcast guests with you, and reflect on what it all means.


Full Show Notes
Visit the Grokkist podcast hub for a full digest of this episode including transcript, links and resources: https://grokk.ist/stillcuriouspodcast/s3e9-27-gifts-of-life-changing-learning

Recorded 27 November 2023

Website: grokk.ist/stillcuriouspodcast | Email: podcast@grokk.ist | Socials: @grokkist
Music: Kleptotonic Swing by Tri-Tachyon

when we hear the word education for most of us that go to association is with teachers, lectures, classrooms, courses, institutions, and credentials, all of the apparatus of school. If you're familiar at all with my work, you'll know that I'm a big fan of this quote from mark Twain. Never let school interfere with your education. If you're the kind of person who loves learning, but doesn't love school. This will touch you in the feelings right away. But what does it mean? How does school interfere with education? Well, we made a whole video about that and about reclaiming the old school idea of school. He is a little snippet. Education is the basis of society's design. The system that instills what's in everybody's mind. And under this system, the society we... Defines economically, unequally, ecologically arise. So redefine school, not a tool of the state, but a movement that arises from those who create, whose mode of exchange isn't monetary wealth, but relationship and wisdom as an end in itself. No more tests, no more rules, no more half truths back to the roots. Back to old school schools. To put it simply it's about recognizing that the practice of learning is something distinct from the institutions of learning. Institutions can help. They're supposed to help, but as with so many things in life, what often ends up happening is that the very institutions that exist to uphold an important public. Good. Can become estranged from the living nature of the good they are supposed to uphold to the point that they can end up becoming an obstacle or even a threat to those who are interested in the practice itself rather than the institution. Or as we put it in the video, Are you really surprised? Humans have a tendency to systematize and the systems have. Fine until the systems blind to the very human beings for whom the system desired One of the most pernicious ways that I find school and the institutions of learning interfere with education and the practice of learning. Is to hijack pretty much all conversations about education and make them about the education system. Which subtly reinforces the idea that the education system somehow has a monopoly on learning. But what if the actual learning that most changes people's lives is happening somewhere else entirely. As a high school dropout who since spent time getting a bunch of university greys that most definitely interfered with by education. This is a question that has interested me for the longest time. You're listening to the Still Curious Podcast with me, Danu Poyner. Where, when and how to moments of truly life-changing learning actually happen. What do they look like? When have you had a learning experience that actually changed your life? If you think back through all the classes you've taken, the certificates, you've earned the books. You've read the films you've seen. The things you've tried, the places you've been, the people you've looked up to. What stands out most to you as a truly life-changing learning experience. On my podcast, Still Curious. I talk to people who have somehow managed to keep their curiosity intact well into adulthood. Despite the best efforts of the world around them. And one question I ask everyone who comes on the show is. If you could gift someone, a life-changing learning experience, what would it be and why? I've been doing this for a little while now. And it's always my favorite part of the show because I never have any idea what to expect and the things that each person comes out with, uh, often surprising moving and profound. When you put them all together, the overall effect is even more striking and revealing. So today I'd like to share the combined wisdom of 27 of my podcast, guests with you and reflect on what it all means. For me, the responses to what's a life changing learning experience, you would give someone. For broadly into three buckets. So we'll take them one at a time and I'll offer some thoughts on the answers as a whole. We'll get into it right after the music on this special solo episode of the Still Curious Podcast. The first bucket is all about life-changing learning experiences. That broaden our perspective, starting with the gift of empathy.

Kat Daley:

The biggest thing I wish anybody could have in learning anything is just the ability to empathize, to truly understand that there's things you don't understand about who people are, and what makes their decisions, and what drives them. And that sometimes you can imagine being in their shoes, but sometimes you can't, and just to acknowledge that you can't understand it and respect that whatever decisions they make or are forced to make might not be an indictment on them being mad or bad or sad or whatever.

Empathy is about expanding our inner imaginative space to include the perspectives and experiences of others. I like cat's point about there being limits to what you are. I might be able to imagine based on our experience and perspective, And that sometimes we simply can't imagine what it's like to be in this other person's situation. Extending out empathy, even in situations where we can't understand. It's an act of grace and humility. Through which we acknowledge the existence of worlds beyond the borders of our own imagination. And exploring imaginative worlds beyond our own experience is a life-changing learning experience that can come through the gift of fiction.

Amanda Young:

It would be for every person to be able to find a book or a TV show or a movie that cracks them open and makes them think about the world differently and sits with them long after they've finished it.

That's a big reader myself. This one spoke to me that feeling of being cracked open. You'll never be the same again, but it's like a Japanese kid Suki bowl where you end up more beautifully broken than when you started. And if we expand our imaginative space far enough, We may eventually come to see that. What at first looks like an overwhelming array of differences can turn out to be expressions of a deeper unity.

Diego Boada:

I would want to give people the ability to see the world from a different perspective from the other. We just know what we know, and we don't know what we don't know. Working with people across countries I realized that we're not that different. We are human beings and so there's something about that. It doesn't matter what language you speak, what you do, what you know, just the power of seeing the world through someone else's eyes. it really helps you see the world in a different perspective.

With all that in mind. It will probably come as no surprise. That one answer, which comes up a lot is spending time in another country.

Ann Collins:

I would gift someone a time to live abroad and to experience another culture. It's coaching every day, because you're having to adapt and think and reflect. You learn so much about another place obviously, and other people, but you learn so much about yourself too. And you also learn so much about where you've come from. You see things with a different eye. You're able to communicate in a different way and really have a lot of gratitude for what you have and for the people around you. I think you appreciate what other people do for you. For me, every time I've lived overseas, and I do make a distinction between going on holiday and actually living, it's a gift that I would love to give to other people.

Well, the kind of person who leads with curiosity, travel offers, not just new experiences and fresh input. But also a mirror.

Maria Fernanda Puertas:

I would say, from a very personal and current experience, I would say living abroad. I have been very privileged throughout my life in Argentina of being well-educated and having the chance to work, to meet people, to research. But what you learn when you face to a completely different culture, a completely different routine, and in group of people and ways of saying and doing things, it's a metacognitive process because you get to reflect upon your own beliefs, your own practices. I guess I've been living here for over a year and I'm still processing all of that. I'm still processing what I used to do and I used to think, I used to believe. Again, this is something that you're asking me today and today I can certainly say that: having the possibility to live in a different country.

All the times the life-changing learning of travel is about the richness of experience. There are some understandings we can only access and process outside the rational consciousness of our usual routine. Like when we're in a dream state. In the right spirit travel can be like stepping into a living dream that changes you when you wake up.

Myles Tankle:

go to India, Go to India, get on a plane. Uh, I've been fortunate enough to travel some parts of the world and I've lived in a few different countries, but going to India with my now partner who, at that point, was just a friend on a holiday was one of the strongest life-changing experiences. More than anything else, the beautiful thing about that country is that it is all things all at once. There are the most wonderful moments of joy and happiness and color and fluidity of experience, which live literally right next to and on top of the deepest, darkest parts of the human experience. You can either stand at the top of a mountain or be in the gutter all on the same moment. I think culturally, it's so vast and so different and so diverse and there's so much history there. Ah, it's just the most incredible place.

And then other times Still, it might not be even about where you go and what you do so much as the act of leaving itself.

Grace Liaw:

I know it's not possible with everyone's resources, but going to a different country is guaranteed to transform anybody. It's not so much about the country. It's about leaving home, really leaving home. Not next door to the town next to you, but to put yourself in a completely foreign environment for an extended period of time. That one will stretch you in ways that you couldn't possibly experience in a familiar setting and transform you and show you what you're capable of, that you, you can do much more than you would think you could do. It will show you your limitations too. Humbling and empowering together naturally will transform a person and

As well as the feeling of being stretched, tested, and reformed. There's also a sensual freedom that comes from temporarily stepping outside yourself and the everyday burdens of attachments and identities that we all lug around with us. From the sort of limbo space that travel offers, we have free to examine the many parts of our lives that we live unreflectively. And when we stepped back into our usual lives, we can consciously choose which attachments and identities we want to bring back with us and experience the power of that. Choosing.

Christopher Schoenwald:

I really like this question. I think it would be a life lived abroad, at least for a year and a minimum a year's time. It just forces you to step out of your own world, your own worldviews, the way that you interpret the world. It just challenges your own ideas of what's right, what's wrong, you know? And I think a lot of people have been quoted as saying, a lot of the world troubles that we have right now would be solved if we just had like these programs set up where like everyone had to. I mean, that's completely unrealistic, but I mean, if in a perfect world where everyone could experience another culture at least once within their life, not just like buy the internet or even a conversation on the internet, but literally stepping into a different world, you know, breathing in the air of a different region of the world and, all of that, what that represents, I think it'd be a lot easier for people to find a common ground. Speaking of my own experiences as of living abroad and now, my ability to look at my own culture and elements that I like and elements that I don't like, and, and, and challenging some of those thoughts, some of those ideas and finding bits and pieces of another culture that I find really appealing and great, and some things that I don't, but at least having these ideas that the world is so unique. It is so distinct that just slipping into one mindset or one worldview, it's, it's a dangerous thing, you know? And if you can give that opportunity to somebody to understand that there's so much more out there that that's powerful and

So the embodied nature of travel makes it pretty much a sure fire way for anyone leading with curiosity to broaden their perspective. Whether as a living dream, a test, a mirror, or a sum of all of the above, that's greater than its parts. But what about other life changing pathways to empathy and expanding one's perspective? When I was little, I used to imagine an empathy helmet that you could wear to instantly access the full sensory experience of someone else's perspective. Uh, way to main line empathy, I guess. I was reminded of that when listening to Lara's life-changing learning gift.

Lara Clarke:

I think it would be a gift to everyone, or to the people that don't experience this already themselves, as the opportunity to find yourself in a situation where you truly are in somebody else's shoes. So really properly having an insight into a different perspective, a different viewpoint. Properly engaging in that, because I think we talk at each other a lot and we listen to opinions, but we don't really absorb them. But to really understand, to walk a mile, or a kilometer, in another person's shoes and really truly understand all of the challenges, the barriers, the issues that they face. If it's a gift to everyone, it might be the person that's most opposite to them. Like, having that opportunity to experience that other worldview, I think would just be really eye-opening for a lot of people.

And what, if we could expand our empathy and broaden our perspective even further into the non-human world.

Amanda Nicole:

I would invite them to listen with me. I would invite them to allow the plants to be their teachers. That's what I've done and it has changed my life. Every aspect of it, even the way I express myself. My teacher, Matthew Wood, he did write a book, Seven Herbs, and the subtitle is Plants as Teachers. And that's what I've experienced. So if anybody could have an educational experience, it would be to have a plant as a teacher. To sit with it and be able to commune with it and receive it and hear it in a way where it is teaching you something about yourself or your way of being, or the world or itself. It takes us outside of what we know, which is a good place to be.

How far can we go with the life-changing learning of broadening our perspective. Well, I'll give the last word on this bucket to Bob and estate planner whose life-changing learning gift is one of the most profound you'll hear.

Robert Kabacy:

I would want somebody to have a near death experience and the reason I would want them to have that and come out of it, cause I don't want them to die, but I'd want them to come out of it because the people who I've met who have had near death experiences see the world in a very unique, enlightened way that the rest of us who don't understand what death really is feel. They just enjoy every moment a little bit more. They appreciate things a little bit more. And the minutia of the day bothers them a little bit less. If you are diagnosed with cancer and you realize that you may not make it, and then you do make it, you become a little bit different person. You have an experience that says, wow, I dodged a bullet on that one. If I could somehow magically implant that feeling of seeing the world a little bit better without the near death experience, that's what I'd want to do.

Wow. Reflecting on all we've heard so far, we can already see that when it comes to the learning experiences that people think of as truly life changing. We are a long way from the classroom and the world of institutionalized education. And that's just our first bucket. We've heard gifts of life changing, learning that are all about broadening our perspective. Let's have a little music to let that breathe and sink in. And when we come back, we'll hear stories from our second bucket. Which contains life changing, learning experiences that are all about mindset. Belief and finding our authentic self. Now second bucket of life-changing learning experiences is all about mindset. Belief and finding our authentic self. And you found first bucket was all about a broadening of perspective. The first example from our second bucket is all about keeping things in perspective.

Eleanor Colla:

I think the fact that librarians, The work we do is very important, but also knowing that No one's going to die. I think that, for me, it was very useful to know, being able to step out and have that perspective.

For others, a life-changing gift can be learning, not to worry what people think of you.

Travis Yuan:

Would encourage people to let go of things, to worry about the past or assumptions about others. When I grew up their expectations pressure from the family members, society, the whole environment, but that's not actually their problem. I live my own life. So why do they put my behavior or whatever to themselves. They don't need to worry about it. You just need to let it go.

Changes in mindset can be so powerful that after we've experienced them, we see others who might be stuck and which we could gift them the same transformational insight we had or whatever version of it would unlock something equivalent in them.

Seth Fleischauer:

There's uh, There's a member of my family that hasn't adopted the same growth mindset that I have. I see the potential of them having that and feel that it would be such an amazing experience that ultimately they're, I think, afraid to have. I'm not sure what the experience is. I've done some out there stuff with body work and Reiki and some of these spiritual things. What would work for any given person to shift a mindset like that I think is a very personal thing. I don't think I have a way of predicting what that would be for this person but the end result is what I would give them. And I wish I knew how to get them there.

But others are life-changing gift may not be a particular mindset, but rather learning to have deep self knowledge, to really understand our own motivations and the beliefs that drive our actions.

Lawrence Yeo:

I saw this question on your list of questions, and I was like, huh. Such a hard question, but which makes it good. I think the best way to learn about yourself is moments, and let's say we completely condense into a learning experience where it's over one week. You just write out all your thoughts, We can start with your beliefs, your beliefs about yourself, your beliefs about your relationship to work, relationship to money, your relationship to your family, everything. And then underneath each one, ask, why? Why do you have this belief? Why do you think this? Why do you think that? When people journal, most people talk about the what's of life. Like, what did I do today? What did I experience, what did I accomplish? But the far more powerful thing to this journal about is the why. why did you accomplish that? Why did you want to accomplish that? journaling about the whys will reveal more about yourself than any what ever can. if people did this regularly, there would be just enormous change in the world. If people understood their motivations and understood their intentions, and took a closer look at why they believe the things they believe, knowing that so much of it has been instilled by conditioning and norms. I don't know. I don't know what the world would look like, but think it would look a lot different than what it looks like now a more positive direction. if I had the opportunity to gift someone that, I would just say, Hey, yeah, for the next few days, what if you just dropped everything and did that and you actually just really took your time with that, because I think that it could very much change your life.

Finding the shape of your authentic self in a commodified world can feel a lot like sculpture. You start with a nondescript slab of marble heavy with expectations and social conditioning. And you gradually chip and chisel away to reveal the shape of something beautiful beneath. And you do that by examining inch by inch, as you go, the material that's been given to you. The lumpy bits that you have that perhaps you don't need. And what parts are essential to the shape, your slowly defining. That sculpting is happening at the intersection of self and society. And it's important both to find where your edges are, but also to remember that your sculpture of self is made of from stuff. Even if, sometimes it feels like jelly.

Gail Reichert:

I think it would come back to that self-talk, because I see so much potential dampened down by lack of belief and lack of willingness to find out where your edges I believe in living at the edge"."if you're not living at the edge you're taking up too much space". And I think, if I can continue living at the edge, if I can continue pushing myself and nudging others, I've got to, probably pull back a bit on nudging others, and just take responsibility for myself. Then, I've got the possibility of living a very full life. Scooting into the grave fully used up. I don't want to go out when I've still got some fuel in the tank. I want to use it all up. So, a Life-changing experience I could give to someone is, be aware of the limitations you putting on yourself. Be aware of the words that you're saying to yourself and speak to yourself as if you were speaking to your best friend or your closest,dearest relative. Believe in yourself, test yourself, find out where your edges are. Danu Poyner:

It's called Joe of course might be too tidy, intentional and static as a metaphor for a project of self-understanding. Sometimes a life-changing experience is learning just to hurl yourself into things and find out who you are in the process.

Kathryn Harris:

If I was to gift something to a young person or an older person, is just step right outside your comfort zone. Do something amazingly different that you've never planned on, that you've never thought of and you will not regret it. You just learn so much from that experience about yourself and I would gift that to somebody in a heartbeat. Tears and all.

Some call it getting outside your comfort zone or perhaps a life-changing mindset is learning that your comfort side might cover a larger area than you realize.

Maxine Bryant:

One of the things that I'm really keen on at the moment is getting people to change their jobs. That's something that I have been through recently and I've really enjoyed it. Right through that process of thinking,'that's too big a job for me, I couldn't do that job, oh my God that's really scary, I don't know what I'm doing, no I think I could do it, I'll do it, I'll put in my application', to actually going through the interview, reflecting on what you've done, what your skills are, and then getting the job and then recognising how much you actually know when you go into another organisation. Particularly when you've been in a place for so long, you lose sight of how much you've learned, how much you've grown, what you actually know. It's been such a positive experience for me and has taught me so much about myself and made me see myself in a whole new light and I've just been really happy. I would like to hope other people would do that and have a similar experience.

And of course the exhilaration of playing with the edges of what's comfortable. It doesn't have to involve a lot of life upheaval or even metaphor. It can be much more direct and physical than that.

Cristina Huidiu:

Rock-climbing

Danu Poyner:

Rock climbing? Okay.

Cristina Huidiu:

Yeah, definitely. I haven't tried any of the extreme yet safe sports, like diving in Alaska. Rock climbing is definitely safer, exciting, and can teach you a thing or two.

Perhaps the most life changing mindset of all to learn is also the least surprising. The one that tells you to start with the voice inside and allow everything to unfold from there.

Erich Leidums:

not being afraid to follow your heart. As cliche as that sounds, I think in a more concrete way, it's directly related to not being afraid of what other people will think of you. That life lesson for me, hands down has unlocked a power and my gifts, it's connected me to my authenticity and to not be afraid to be me and follow what's in my heart.

Perhaps all this sounds a little fanciful or too whimsical. Or even too self-absorbed for the real world we inhabit. There's a special kind of grievance ed, by those of us who might be wistful, even resentful. That we're here, keeping things running, being consistent, disciplined, and Judah for holding them up while everyone else is off chasing their dreams or following their joy. I guess the isolation and detachment we feel in those circumstances, simply a reflection of our own unfulfilled or repressed desires. Or is there deeper virtue in commitment itself? Well, I'll give the last life-changing gift on mindset and finding the self to John. And international chess Federation master and Nigerian national chess champion.

John Fawole:

That's a very interesting question, and I'm just going to tell the person they should do what they love because it's only when you do what you love that you are able to commit to it. You are happy about it, you have passion for it. And you don't see it like a job It's just like a normal part of you. So it is just like me. If you tell me, okay, I should do everything chess. I'm able to do everything chess because I love it naturally. So just do what you love and you are able to just achieve things you want to achieve in life.

Discovering the commitment that flows from loving something may just be the most life changing learning experience. There is. So that sounds second bucket of life-changing learning experiences on finding the self. Gifted from a wide variety of lived experience. Let's have another musical interlude to absorb all of that. And when we return, we'll look at what's in our third bucket, which is all about transcending, the self. we've already heard a wealth of practical wisdom on broadening our perspective and finding our authentic self. What about life-changing learning experiences that are about transcending, the self. Like learning to appreciate the true power of the mind, body connection.

Trudi Boatwright:

I would gift someone the experience of being pregnant, because I'm a great believer in the mind body connection and how they talk to each other. There's a saying in comedy or comedy performance. We have a major and a minor. Same in piano and music. You have a major and a minor. And all the time in our lives, our head plays our major, our head makes our decisions. It says to our body, you will go exercise now. You don't care if you don't like it, you are going. Our body plays our minor and holds all this information that the brain just doesn't listen to. When you become pregnant, that flips for the first time in your life and your body says things like, you will sleep now. You will do this now. You will eat this now, I've been vegetarian for 20 years. I suddenly had to eat lamb sausages for a week cos my body just said, you will eat lamb sausages. And it was just this incredible journey of seeing how powerful our body is when it is given permission to step forward. So I would like to gift that to everybody so that you can unlock the potential of your body as a communicator and as a learning bunch of cells.

Whether or not, you're in a position to experience the life-changing learning gift of being pregnant. What might it be like to let your body step forward as a communicator in the way Trudy describes.

Colleen Kelley:

I'm going to say that I would gift someone a surfing lesson. Okay. So I have taken many surfing lessons in my life, but I'm never really good at it. I can get up on a board and ride a wave in, but what the surfing lesson teaches you is when you let go, you are gonna ride the wave in. When you're holding on tight and really anxious and fearful, you're gonna crash or you're going to tumble over or all the other things. And this ability to just trust in the movement and getting up and balancing and all of those things. And there's also fear. I always have trepidation going into a surfing session. And then you're riding a wave in and you're standing up and you feel like you're on top of the world. So what does life look like on the other side of that fear and that grip. Also, I think I have bailed on surf lessons before because I've had too much fear. And then you're sitting on the sidelines. And so there is that gift of, do I wanna be a spectator or do I wanna go in and try? I think a surf lesson is a really capsuled moment that embraces a lot of big life questions in one experience.

Let go and ride the wave in. That can also be a life-changing learning experience for any kind of creating whether or not we would describe ourselves as creative.

The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo:

My visual art nowadays is a lot of times is based in pareidolia, which is a word that just means, like seeing faces in the clouds. It's random data interpreted as something meaningful. People that come to visit the artist residency, a lot of times people have not drawn or painted since they were kids. So I will tell them to just randomly work with some watercolors, just put'em on the page, like however feels right, and then either I will do it or I can show them how to do it. You start seeing things within the shapes and you start outlining them. And I feel like that's a really good way, one to learn how to draw. Cuz a lot of people's barrier for that is, like I, I wouldn't know where to start or I wouldn't know what to draw. And it's like, if you see it, you can draw it, you can trace it. So I would give that as a learning experience, which is on a creative level, but also I think it teaches us that the world, as we perceive it, has first been processed through the senses and battered with our associations and gets simultaneously automatically projection mapped back into the world. And you become very aware of this when you start seeing things that aren't there and learning to trace them. You become more aware of where those limits are. So I would feel like that's a learning experience that on various levels I like to instill in people.

It's a delicious irony that it's precisely by letting go of the self that we can in fact, be more present and alive. And it turns out that's a life-changing experience we can learn from. Even without needing to be pregnant or go surfing, we'll take an art class.

Lalith Gunaratne:

Just learn to focus on your breath and bring your mind and body together because you become way more powerful if your mind and body are aligned to see world as it really is.

Danu Poyner:

One breath at a time. Hey,

Lalith Gunaratne:

One breath at a time.

We started this whole conversation by observing that the learning experiences that people actually describe as life-changing. Most often have little or nothing to do with classrooms or educational institutions at all. And yet we are much too relaxed about allowing the institutions of schooling to interfere with the practice of educating ourselves and each other. So it seems appropriate that our final life-changing learning gift today. It's not only about transcending the self, but also about recentering, the practice of education.

Nathan Dufour Oglesby:

It's to teach. I don't think everybody's had the opportunity to teach. It's a very simple act but it's a very powerful act when you're really doing it, because you disappear, like the'I' does disappear in a way when you give yourself to trying to get an idea across. It happens to us in conversation all the time. But then when it crosses over into teaching, maybe in a state of relation, that's very special where you and this person are both stewards or cultivators of the idea. It's almost like an act of worship together where you really are there together. I'm not saying everybody should be a teacher as a job, but I think anybody who has taught knows what I mean, in some sense, in that you get these little moments, but I don't think everybody gets those moments where they really get to share it. You can tell that people are hungry for it because, if somebody has an opportunity to even train you at a job or something like that, you can tell there's a pleasure that gets ignited, we all get. It's not about being authoritative. It's about the joy of losing the self in being a conduit for something that transcends you.

Well said, Nathan. Let's have one more little musical pause for reflection, and then I'll be back to offer some closing thoughts to bring us home. So, what does it all mean? Well, for me, the bottom line is nothing less than this. If we want the way we do education to be actually life-changing. Then we need to be a lot less distracted by the apparatus of schooling and a lot more interested in learning how to hold space. We need to remember that education is about drawing out, not putting in. And we need to be wondering how to be better midwives because everything new needs to be held and needs a place into which it can be born. We need to respect educational spaces as a magic circle or timidness. The ancient idea of a sacred space within which special rules apply and in which extraordinary events are free to occur. If we need structure, it's only to the extent that it creates the opportunity for us to be in radically present relationship long enough. For our fellow human becomings to grow into flourishing human beings. If we're sincere about the practice of education. And this is how we need to come to that practice. If we're trying to gift life changing, learning experiences to others. And if trying to gift life-changing learning experiences to others is not what we're trying to do. Then just what exactly is it that we think we're doing? My hope is that if we take this message to heart, Then the practice of education might be allowed to interfere instead with the institutions at schooling. And wouldn't that be a life-changing learning experience for all of us. So there you have it, 26 gifts of life-changing learning all about broadening our perspective, finding our authentic self and ultimately transcending that self. Of course this isn't the final word on life. Changing learning experiences by any means far from it. These are just my reflections and interpretations from the convenience sample of conversations I've had so far. I feel like I'm just getting started and I'm excited to hear from an even wider and more diverse range of voices. If you want to share a life-changing learning experience, you would give someone feel free to email me a note of voice message or video, whatever works best and send it to Daniel Danu. Poyner at grok dot Este. I might want to try to spell that out. It's Britain in the show notes. And guess what I do have one more life-changing learning gift to share. It didn't fit neatly into any of my three buckets. But it sort of fits into all of them. Or not. The buckets that really only a framing device anyway. So consider this a reminder. Don't be afraid to reframe things any time. You're not happy with the buckets you've been given. Anyway, his Sam.

Sam Hoffman:

A smartphone. If everyone growing up could have a smartphone, it would be a life-changing learning experience across the entire world, right? If people could have the electricity, keep it powered, the data connectivity to reach things in a timely manner, and the hardware, in their hands, regardless of where they are in the world, is a life-changing learning experience. Cuz guess what? You got everything. Everything you could ever want to know in the palm of your hands.

And thank you for having me in the Palm of your hands, DHEA, invisible listener. This is my last episode for the year. I've been doing this show for two full years now. And it's only really, now that I feel like it's finally told me what it wants to be. Or maybe I finally learn how to hear what it wanted to be all along. In any case I'll be back next year with more conversations and reflections on what it means to be someone who insists on still approaching the world with curiosity and care, despite, you know, everything. Thank you so much for listening and stay curious.

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Danu Poyner

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