I spent some points during the weekend reviewing field notes, journals, planners: marking passages with orange gel-pens. I scanned my texts, emails, Tweets, and posts; quickly tagging, not second-guessing. I needed to be in that liminal space between visceral and logical, madness and method.

Seeing data isn’t about “seeing” at all; but about being able to unsee.  Stripping away preconceptions begins with willingness. “How do I know what I know?” is not the first question; “What is it I think I know?” is.

Reviewing these data in aggregate this morning, I see now where my frustration festers. I’m unable to un-learn how I’ve learned to learn; an epistemology I’ve trained in and applied. My own research (and growing list of emerging questions from it) require(s) attention; I can no sooner abandon the call than I can a child. So, I’ve discovered that for me, the “how” and the “what” of knowing are phases of the same moment in time, a quantum entanglement.

I simply can not suspend my own heuristic of living inquiry; of the “how” of what constitutes formal and informal learning.

John Dewey wrote in 1897 “I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”

Living inquiry, then, is simply living for me.

What is it I think I “know”?  That I don’t. 

My responsibility is to conscious curiosity.