This is What We Choose

The closer something is to the core of existence, the harder it is to define. 

One of the reasons we struggle to do consistent research into play, for instance, is that we can't, from research team to research team, seem to agree on what exactly play is . . . Although most of us know it when we see it. Consciousness is so notoriously difficult to define that it's often referred to as "the hard problem." But we know it when we experience it. We struggle to define "life," "art," "learning," and "happiness" even as we have all had those experiences.

Perhaps the most elusive, and most central, of all is this thing called love. Parental love, romantic love, devine love, communal love, self-love, redemptive love, and more, are all entangled in our ideas of what love is all about.

In his classic self-help book, The Road Less Traveled, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck tries out this definition of love: "(T)he will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." There's another impossible to define word -- spirit.

I can honestly say that I've loved every child who has ever some my way. I didn't always like every child, but I always made the choice to love them.

"Love," writes Peck, "is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love." As early childhood educators, as caretakers of young children, as parents, when we embrace the choice to nurture growth in young children, be that spiritual or otherwise, we are choosing love.

Of course, in a world that often views "love" as something instinctual or out of our control, the idea of choosing love may sound like a pipe dream. After all we "fall" in love, right? And falling in love suggests a Bam! Boom! Swoon! type of an experience, but I would argue that that ain't love. It might lead to love, but as bell hooks writes in her book All About Love, "To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients -- care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication." This takes time and it starts with a choice to nurture growth.

I know that some of us are uncomfortable talking about love in a professional context, but ours is a field that touches, relentlessly, upon the core of what it means to be human. It is that place of awe and wonder, yes, but also right there beside it, are the awful truths that we futilely believe we can hide from the ears of youth. Every day, all day, we nurture children as they howl with pain, as they freeze in fear, as they glimpse the abyss. We call upon our commitment to care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust, and communication as we sit with them through everything. We choose to do this. We choose love.

This often unspoken, even unacknowledged choice we make each day is why the efforts of dilettantes to streamline or standardize or otherwise improve our practice always fail. They can only see the rote. They can only see those things that are simple to define because they stand so far away from the core of what it means to exist. We work in the part of the world in which definitions are elusive, and it's not just love. Teaching itself defies definitions. It's art, play, and learning as well. It's the hard problem. This is what we commit ourselves to when we choose to nurture spiritual growth. It's a commitment to life itself. 

This is how our profession is unlike any other.

The reason that those outside our profession find what we do so confounding is that most other professions are based on love's opposite: power.

"When love rules power disappears. When power rules love disappears." ~Paulo Coelho

There is no commitment to love in relationships based upon power. When power supplaints love, we find rigid schedules, both daily and developmental, in which everyone must constantly worry about "falling behind." Power predominates in places where adults seek to prepare children for some future life rather than allowing them to live the life they are living.

"Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." ~Carl Jung

Love does not dictate; love does not manage; love does not need tricks and tips for manipulating children. Love is about connection. It is about listening. It is about acceptance. It is about this unique and beautiful person. As Mister Rogers wrote, "To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now." That is where child-centered learning begins. Love does not prepare children for life because to love someone is to know that they are already, right here and now, living.

That is what love nurtures. This is what we choose.

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I've been writing about play-based learning almost every day for the past 15 years. I've recently gone back through the 4000+ blog posts(!) I've written since 2009. Here are my 10 favorite in a nifty free download. Click here to get yours.

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