Marilyn Dyck
My commitment to sociology in university began a slow awakening to ‘a way of seeing’ for me. Sociological thought begins and ends with: ‘nothing is as it seems’. My personal outcome? Listening, reflection and seeking the right questions have become the central and critical activity of my participation in our society.
In recent decades, my opportunity has been to lead and participate in a community project, listening to and learning from young people on the street who have experienced more of LIFE than I could imagine. These 30 years of listening changed my thinking, my beliefs, my seeing and understanding the society we share, and solidified my passion to pay attention.
My invitation for you to consider thinking with a way of seeing is qualified by my assurance that there are no expectations. These pages serve as a space for us all to think and experience how art makes the world more gentle and gives us space to know ourselves in relation to it.
I have been affirmed in my learning process by the thoughts of George Simmel, a sociologist who was diligent to ‘go his own way’. He believed that our individuality is essential to sustain our personal focus; and that capturing ideas and learning happens within a context - as a communal process.
Learning is also about trusting ourselves. Simmel had no expectation for ‘intellectual heirs’ who would pass on his learning! He understood that as each person participates in the shared learning of community, then uses and applies their own perspectives in their own contexts with their own understanding.
A way of seeing is critical because it is your own. Trusting what you perceive you ‘see’ is shaped and reshaped and changing as you engage in life. ‘Seeing’ really is the operative of how each of us participates in our society.
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