Question 183 of 365: Are we possible?

I have plans. Brainstorms and Mind Maps, too. I write out lists and sketch out wireframes. I see folder structures and hashtags, creating them with a few touches on the big glass screen in front of me. And then I step back from all of it, looking to see if what I have created is feasible. I want to know if what I am breathing into being is something that others might be able to take part in. Is my creation just an academic exercise or is it the next step in learning. I wonder if all of my vision is yet again going to come crashing down according to the reality of what we are capable.

I cower at the idea that everything I believe isn’t really possible given the constraints of other people and of the institutions that currently exist. It makes me shudder in disbelief that I could be that disconnected from reality. Existential crisis aside, am I a figment of my imagination? Are the things that I would like to co-create only available to those who have experienced all that I have? I hope as a teacher and thinker, I would be able to make my vision real by just framing it correctly and working with others. But, when  I see the distance between what is currently available and what I truly want, I wonder if I am just a bridge too far.

I want all that I do to sync with others.

Does this sync?

• Learning is co-created
• Sharing is essential
• Tools are multi-use

They aren’t revolutionary in themselves, but they are against everything that I see in the business, education, and personal world.

Sure, I see social networks being leveraged for connections with others and I see people using shared documents to keep up on the latest version. But, in officially sanctioned work, learning is singular because it has to be possessed by someone. Because it requires a grade or a promotion, there is no incentive whatsoever to pull off a massive collaboration. Who will take the credit then?

Sharing has become the background for nearly everything that happens online, but the value of sharing is greatly depreciated because nearly all institutionalized sharing is internal, blocked off to the value of the open web. Facebook isn’t open. A link (without logging in to access it) is open.

A rock isn’t single use. Neither is a lego. Somehow, though, everything that we professional develop about has set limits for what is possible. Multi-use is about not accepting what is laid out in a manual.

I guess I’m not as interested as I once was in having everything perfectly laid out. I’m more interested in pushing what is messy, what is overly hopeful. While others may say that hope is not a strategy, I believe that it is the only thing that allows what we believe ourselves to be to be possible.

I leave you with this children’s poem:

Well they said I was impossible
Yes, they said I was impossible
And that someone who behaved like me
Couldn’t be, couldn’t be

But I knew that I was possible
Not completely unbelievable
And the one they said could never be
It was me, it was me

But there’s something else they didn’t know:
You can change your shape and you can grow
Out of nothing into something new
Something made up into something true

Though it happens quite impossibly
The impossible turns out to be
Possibly