The other evening I was listening to a radio broadcast as I drove home. The interviewer was talking to MMA fighters, or MMA sports figures as some refer to themselves, and the question was asked if they ever enter the fight cage with a sense of fear. All but one answered in the positive. They indicated that the fear kept them sharp and it did not allow them to become complacent. In many ways fear protected them.
Over four years ago I began an education doctorate with a focus on distance and online learning models and I entered this wonderful academic endeavor with, what seemed like an unending supply of passion. I devoured the readings and pushed myself with the written assignments. My 24/7 conversations centred on my passionate interests in the area of knowledge creation and how we might alter online learning environments to enhance and add richness to the learning process. I love this stuff and I pushed hard to prepare my dissertation proposal and defend it so that I could begin my research. I did that and I finished all of the required courses and I pushed to the front of the line and jumped into my research. I actively engaged my research participants and scooped up my data and
Yes and that was over 16 months ago and yes the sentence above does end abruptly and unfinished because besides writing nothing for the better part of the first 8 of 16 months I now laboriously write a few words at a time trying to form a document that best represents the sum of my efforts in this great academic endeavor and have yet to arrive at a place that speaks to the research, the wealth of data collected and all of the passion imbued in the foundation of this personal effort. Something happened to my passion and yet unlike an MMA fighter, an element of fear has stepped up and impeded my momentum and created an internal imbalance. I do not intend to walk away but I spend way too much time writing way too little with a limited understanding as to the nature of the obvious impediments to this task. Something is standing in my way and it has been there way too long.
I celebrate the wonderful successes of my peers and intuitively know that I will, at some point arrive at that common gate of defense but the wall I sit before at this moment is coarse, uninformed, and lightless. It does little to allow that well of passion to resurface and I don’t know why. Passion is or should be just there, passion is a life-wind that grabs you and picks you up and envelopes you in all your being. There is nothing wrong with fear but fear without passion creates an imbalance that appears to consume the light.
I write this in the hope that these public doorways can serve to open other aspects of creativity and with these magical, virtual doors I trust that the winds of passion may reenter, envelope my being and offer back a vision to that which I love.
In a very tongue-and-cheek way, in an attempt to find inspiration, and who the heck knows where this came from, I thought of Ronald Reagan’s words, “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity… if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/reagan-tear-down.htm
I too seek a bright hole through an asbestos-laden, dusty wall.