Capturing The Moment — Papilio multicaudata Butterfly.
The image and the short verse in the link are spectacular. Martin Buber wrote complex prose which was poetic. His central point in his seminal work I and Thou was we become who we are in relationship with ourselves, others, and the world. He has a beautiful section about our relationship with trees. In our relationships, we become unique. We are not duplicates of anyone else.
We are who we are because of our relationships, the impact they have on us, and the sense we make of them. Sometimes, more often than not I imagine, the relationships go unnoticed and are taken-for-granted just as our uniqueness is. We become whats in the world rather than a particular who in the world. We might even fall victim to seeing ourselves as whats, as products, rather than that unique person who is only expressed in our particular whoness.
In a world driven by standardization and conformity to standards, it is difficult to find one’s voice and express one’s self through that voice.
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About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
Your last sentence was striking because it led me to realize so clearly that standardization and commoditization actually crowd relationship out. It’s obvious when you say it, but I hadn’t thought of it so directly for a while.
There is a beautiful way in which self-expression is the necessary medium or material of relationship, and at the same time relationship is the very means by which uniqueness is formed and sustained. For we are unique principally because of our different webs of relationship to all that is.
Michael
Thank you for a wonderful comment Michael.
Beautifully and so directly expressed. “We become whats in the world rather than a particular who in the world.” This and the last line are really thought provoking. Thank you for sharing. Regards.
You are welcome and thank you for the wonderful comment.