Visions Service Adventures

I know VISIONS has to keep up with the times (we just started this blog in earnest), that the viral marketing net is far-reaching in its cast. I love that we can close distances between us and our local partners across the globe like never before. The ability to be in touch with our staff and program directors, participant and staff alumni in a variety of relatively easy ways is priceless. Still, frankly, something about this whole viral business feels odd and often overwhelming to me. For this reason, not a few here at VISIONS are amused that I've been tapped to be the occasional blogger.

Okay, so, um, hmmm....now what? What to write in my blog? My fellow Director plopped a newspaper blurb on my desk: "Five tips to blog your way to success." It was intimidating. Then again, it got me thinking. In fact, many thoughts started percolating. Thoughts about the Web and blogging, Facebook and streaming, Twitter, tweets and texting, the Internet Age, instant communication, the proliferation and dissemination of tons of information drawn from zillions of sources.

As we keep apace with social networking, becoming increasingly engaged with virtual tools, the wider the chasm feels between this activity and the hands-on learning that so fully engages us in the field in the summer.

The activities that occupy our work days during the off-season are dramatically different from and diametrically opposed to VISIONS, essentially. In fact, when we're in the field, we outright reject social networking and viral tools that we otherwise wholeheartedly embrace.  If I think about it, this is wild dichotomy, crazy irony.

Service and travel programs, wilderness adventures and explorations, sailing expeditions, traditional and non-traditional summer camps, the Fresh Air Fund and other such sojourns are experiential. We all offer exposure to knowledge that decidedly does not reside on the Internet, will never be had via e-mail or Facebook. I am referring to the marvelous knowledge of the world that can be tapped only by being immersed in the world, free for the most part of gadgetry.

About 15 years ago I discovered and read voraciously the writings of James Hillman, a psychologist, scholar, professor, editor, and author (and Pulitzer Prize nominee) of dozens of books. Hillman's ideas about humanities and culture, philosophy and psychology have made him a provocative critic of 20th and 21st centuries and of thinkers whose views on 'meaning', Hillman argues, are too materialistic, overly reductive and much too literal.

"We are hooked on meaning," says Hillman. "We think that explanations tell us more...." Interpretation is not the thing, Hillman declares. Experience is the thing. Information and experience are not the same thing. Furthermore, experience, not information, ignites aesthetic knowledge, which is afforded only by being in and engaging with the world. This is the knowledge that defies explanations and eludes modes of interpretation. It is not to be acquired through dialoguing. It lies in the realm of experience only, out of reach of technology and information systems.

I'm indebted to Hillman for helping me articulate why the knowledge acquired from pure experience is crucial to a young person's development, and, dare I say, moral development. I am indebted because I am reminded every year of what VISIONS and other experiential programs are at their cores. Experience, thoughtfully if not gently monitored, is imperative to shaping character.

Something I say to our summer staff during training is that the burden of consciousness is carried by the world. Children must be in and learn from the world to be truly, wholly educated and to grow into conscious adults. The knowledge intrinsic to the world is aesthetic knowledge. It calls forth the senses, the instincts, the deep self. It has to do with movement and spontaneity. Aesthetic knowledge is much greater than mere mental reflection because it is afforded only through engaging the mind, muscles, heart and psyche (the unexplainable, undeniable aspect of each person). When information is acquired in equal measure with aesthetic knowledge, learning is vitally linked to greater consciousness. Only aesthetic knowledge promises a sentient human being.

Far away from classrooms, free of chitter-chatter tools, experiential programs are the vital counterpoint to information-based knowledge. Kids absorb aesthetic knowledge through conversations and total engagement with their new surroundings and environments.

Rather than diagloguing with an abstract social network, learning happens in "tweets" with forest trails or while climbing mountains, canoeing streams and lakes, navigating the seas, sensing the currents and reading the stars, feeding animals, growing and harvesting crops. Our social networking happens by living among and working with people from different cultures who may speak different languages who have different traditions and relationships with their environments.

One thing is certain. There is plenty to write, talk and tweet about afterward, when participants return home from their gadget-free summers with a new and deeper appreciation of the world.

I know I can be clearer. Drat! There are more thoughts percolating. But I must return to this another time. I haven't checked my Reply box yet or listened to the text message I got while writing this, and then there are those three events to be posted on our Google calender, the Skype call to our Vietnam partners and the photos I must migrate onto our website....

Joanne Pinaire, Director

P.S. The VISIONS team and I will post on our blog a few times each month. Our aim is to create and keep a thoughtful dialogue with you about thought provoking and tangentially-related-to-VISIONS subjects. Because we won't send all blog entries through The Visionary newsletter, if you like, please sign up for our blog posts by clicking on the RSS icon above.