Circles and Seasons

The process of coming full circle rarely feels circular. 

We imagine hurtling ourselves on linear trajectories—away from, beyond, toward—and when we land where we started, there's almost always a moment of surprised recognition. Point B is Point A!  We're back where we began, and yet something is different—or we're different (or both).

On my very first day as an Arts in Education student at HGSE, I wrote, “If we consider 'art' a term for a deeper form of education, then other disciplines become art forms of sorts when participants achieve a certain level of intellectual thought and elegance of expression. All true learning is artistic.” Then, on my final day in class, I found myself re-articulating the idea that art is a form of education and that education is a form of art. The words had remained largely the same, but the year had imbued them with a richer meaning. It had also chipped away at their formal exterior to expose a million living, breathing questions. Rather than becoming a conclusion, my full circle experience was—and continues to be—another beginning.

In a month, I will cut across the country as I leave behind five years' worth of Boston-based networks and resources and settle in the Salt Lake Valley, just forty minutes from my childhood home in Utah Valley. My flight will be direct, but my larger journey has been anything but linear. I left Utah in 2004 to begin life as an undergraduate, and now, after ten years in Arizona, England, Ukraine, Boston, Franklin, and New York, I am turning westward again. I will be coming “home” to family, to friends, to the community of my youth—but I'll also be stepping into a new life that is entirely my own. I remember experiencing the same strange sensation when I returned to the U.S. after eighteen months as a missionary in Ukraine. My home environment hadn't changed much, but I had, profoundly. Home felt both familiar and oddly foreign.

These recent years on the East Coast have also been marked by a brief transition away from Boston and, unexpectedly, back again. My orbits, both large and small, have tended towards circularity.

The earth moves that way too, of course—around and around in tight circles. Its larger trajectory is forward but circular, held always in careful orbit. I wonder: what is the force that holds my own intellectual orbit in place? What is the center point, the origin of that fierce gravitational pull? For me, I think it is Truth. When I recognize an element of truth (expressed in a conversation or a book or a painting or a lecture), I tend to feel a strong pull towards that thought or object or idea. I first approach it directly, squarely.  Then, inevitably, life turns my linear trajectory into a circular one, and I find myself circling that idea and viewing it from every possible vantage point in a 360-degree rotation. What was two-dimensional slowly becomes three-dimensional. I begin to learn. By the time I reach Point B and discover that it was Point A all along, the destination matters far less than journey.

When my flight descends into the Salt Lake Valley, I know I will catch a glimpse of the mountains and experience another full circle moment. I look forward to embracing that moment and using it as an opportunity to pull back from my tight, inner orbit and reflect on my larger orbit. I imagine I will feel a magnified sense of the mixed emotions that I'm experiencing now: gratitude, nostalgia, uncertainty, a waking anticipation.

In Salt Lake City, I plan to actively seek opportunities to challenge myself as an artist and also as a teacher-learner. (Both teachers and learners facilitate the exploration of ideas, and the two identities are almost impossible for me to separate at this point.)  I want my teaching practice to become an art, and I want my art to remain an important facet of my teaching.

In my mind's eye, the path ahead is relatively linear. Still, I know that one day in the not so-far-future, I will probably stumble into another full-circle moment. . . and another. . .and another.

The sun's gravitational pull gives the earth the axial tilt that creates the changing of seasons. As I continue encountering full-circle moments, I hope I will feel a profound gratitude for past seasons of my life and for the people and experiences that have guided my trajectory. I also hope I will feel a very real excitement about the seasons of my life that I have yet to encounter. In the words of C.S. Lewis, we are all born with a balanced desire for both change and permanence. We experience seasons, “each season different, yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme” (Lewis, p. 257). There is a beauty in finding our personal journeys echoed in the natural world and in seeing them reflected in those around us. 

That, itself, is both an education and an art.