EYES to I – Look and Learn

Hold up a mirror and look carefully at your eyes.

The general color, size, and shape of your eyes have been genetically determined.

The wrinkles around your eyes are genetically determined adaptations.

You would have always had wrinkles (genetically determined) but the wrinkles you actually have are adaptations to where and how you live; the light or lack of it, the kinds of particles in your air, your diet, your health, your emotionality’s effects on your chronic facial expressions, and other environmental variables. Your actual wrinkles are the residual physical effects of the history of your genetically determined growth adapting to your environment and your behaviors.

Everything you know or think when you look at your eyes is learned.

Every word that comes to mind. Every bit of knowledge you have about eyes in general and your eyes in particular. Your genetically determined neuro-bio-optic adaptations don’t provide what you know or think or the language you know and think through. Your learning does.

Everything you know or think when you look through your eyes is learned.

Remember back to the first thing you can remember seeing. Ever since, every word, thought, and idea, about anything and everything you have ever seen, you learned.

Imagine a 70-year-old astrophysicist and his 1-year-old grandchild are at a picnic in Central Park NY. As they look at the park and skyline the dimensions of meaning the astrophysicist experiences are off-scale beyond the child’s. A neuro-optic scope monitoring the optic nerve information streaming from their eyes to their brains might show reasonably similar patterns but the internal mental awareness and knowing between the two is incomparably vastly different. Every bit of that difference is learned.

The mirror test – When looking at themselves in the mirror toddlers who have a smudge of red coloring on their faces will touch their faces when they recognize themselves. The age at which children begin to recognize themselves varies by culture, meaning self-recognition varies by learning.

Hold up a mirror and look carefully into your eyes.

What do you see? Everything that comes to your mind, everything you know and think in response to asking that question, you learned.

Who do you see? Everything that comes to your mind, everything you know and think in response to asking that question, you learned.

Do you see a presence, a soul, a spirit? Everything you can know and think in response to asking that question, you learned.

Whether you love yourself or are ashamed of yourself, however you think and feel about yourself, whoever you think you are, you learned.

For all you can know, you are who you learned to be.

Redefining Learning

Learning Character

Learning to Choose

Learning to be Human

Stewarding Learning: Teachers

Stewarding Learning: Families

Lifetime Learning

Unhealthy Learning

Learning Together

I AM Learning