I AM LEARNER


Licensed under a Cre­ative Com­mons licence — see below for details.

I am learner.

Just as no one can see the colours I see, just as no one can hear the music I hear, just as no one can feel what I feel when I hold some­thing in my hand, and just as no one can sense the world as I per­ceive it around me, no one can teach me.

No one can teach me.

I am learner.

I am not taught. I learn. I am human and a social ani­mal, so I learn with oth­ers. I do learn from oth­ers, but what I learn is rarely, if ever, what is taught to me, and rarely, if ever, what oth­ers learn at the same time from the same teach­ers. Often I learn entirely alone.

I am learner.

I per­ceive. I use my senses to know the world around me. I dis­cern pat­terns. I shape my under­stand­ing through metaphor and anal­ogy. I seek to cre­ate pur­pose in my life. Some­times I con­ceive pur­pose where there is none; often I accept oth­ers’ con­cep­tions of pur­pose in life, oth­ers’ con­cep­tions of pur­pose in the universe.

I am learner.

I build a uni­verse in my mind and I live there, a uni­verse that changes con­stantly as I learn. All peo­ple, includ­ing the peo­ple I love, live along­side me in this con­stantly shift­ing uni­verse. I see only glimpses of the lives they lead, because, just as they are play­ers in my world, I am a player in all the uni­verses cre­ated by every other per­son alive.

I am learner.

I con­nect. I con­nect with peo­ple and ideas in the phys­i­cal and vir­tual worlds and dis­cern no bound­ary between the two worlds. I learn in, across, through, with and from the net­works in which I live, work, play and inter­act. I con­tin­u­ally extend my own poten­tial through my con­nec­tions. I make con­nec­tions between what I have already learned and what the world chooses to present to me through my own inter­ac­tions with the world and through the inter­ven­tions and actions of others.

I con­nect there­fore I learn.

I am learner.

I am able to recite facts, echo the opin­ions of oth­ers, assume the atti­tudes of so-called author­i­ties when urged to do so, but I pre­fer to seek real knowl­edge of the chang­ing world in which we live, gen­uine under­stand­ing of the real­i­ties of the human con­di­tion, authen­tic insight into our intrin­sic depen­dence on one another. My need to know for myself is stronger than my need to recite from or imi­tate others.

I am learner.

I imag­ine. I reach beyond the real­ity of my senses and there I build my own dreams and visions; some­times I wel­come oth­ers’ wish­ful think­ing and cre­ate my own place in their fan­tasies, accept­ing the val­ues they place before me, fil­ter­ing and refin­ing them to fit my uni­verse. Often, by acci­dents of time and place and birth, I am con­di­tioned by those around me to accept their social, moral, reli­gious and polit­i­cal val­ues. In these cir­cum­stances, I still cre­ate my own truth but I strug­gle to do so freely, con­strained by the stric­tures imposed on me by others.

I am learner.

I lis­ten to sto­ries from oth­ers; I tell my own sto­ries, to myself, to oth­ers; I par­tic­i­pate in sto­ries, mine and oth­ers’. I deter­mine who I am through a prism of dra­mas, tales, myths, his­to­ries, lies, assumed truths, rit­u­als, games and a com­plex and intri­cate nar­ra­tive that I weave around the real­i­ties of my life. I live and learn from the drama of the now and I recall and learn from the nar­ra­tives woven out of past dramas.

I am learner.

I am not taught.

I learn.

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A plain text ver­sion of I Am Learner can be down­loaded here.


I Am Learner by John Con­nell is licensed under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.johnconnell.co.uk.

By licens­ing I Am Learner in this way, I am encour­ag­ing oth­ers to share it (to copy, dis­trib­ute and trans­mit the work) and to remix it (to adapt the work) in any way they wish with the fol­low­ing conditions:

  • Attri­bu­tion — You must attribute the orig­i­nal work to me, by link­ing or refer­ring your work back to this blog post at http://www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/?p=2697 (but you must not in any way sug­gest that I endorse you or your use of the work).
  • Non­com­mer­cial — You may not use this work for com­mer­cial purposes.
  • Share Alike — If you alter, trans­form, or build upon this work, you may dis­trib­ute the result­ing work only under the same or sim­i­lar license to this one.

    • Any of the above con­di­tions can be waived if you get my per­mis­sion as the copy­right holder

The full licence can be read here.

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