Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps.

Mary Catherine Bateson

Categorized in : Way Age Important

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.

Mary Catherine Bateson

educational memorable graduation

As you get up in the morning, as you make decisions, as you spend money, make friends, make commitments, you are creating a piece of art called your life.

Mary Catherine Bateson

morning life art

The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.

Mary Catherine Bateson

inspiring inspirational thinking

In many ways, constancy is an illusion. After all, our ancestors were immigrants, many of them moving on every few years; today we are migrants in time. Unless teachers can hold up a model of lifelong learning and adaptation, graduates are likely to find themselves trapped into obsolescence as the world changes around them. Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.

Mary Catherine Bateson

teacher life moving

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

Mary Catherine Bateson

diversity understanding believe

What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.

Mary Catherine Bateson

vision color culture

When parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.

Mary Catherine Bateson

parent realization past

Fear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.

Mary Catherine Bateson

lessons teaching teacher

There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors.

Mary Catherine Bateson

toxic metaphor thinking

A glad welcome to this affirmation by a group of psychologists that the self does not stop at the skin nor even with the circle of human relationships but is interwoven with the lives of trees and animals and soil; that caring for the deepest needs of persons and caring for our threatened planet are not in conflict.

Mary Catherine Bateson

caring self animal

Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from one pattern to another: a potential translation in which narrative becomes parable and the once upon a time comes to stand for some renascent truth. This approach applies to all the incidents of everyday life: the phrase in the newspaper, the endearing or infuriating game of a toddler, the misunderstanding at the office. Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.

Mary Catherine Bateson

games memories thinking

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.

Mary Catherine Bateson

change giving death

Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.

Mary Catherine Bateson

design caring memorable

Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.

Mary Catherine Bateson

goals-and-objectives blinkers goal

Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

Mary Catherine Bateson

echoes identity loss

Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.

Mary Catherine Bateson

creativity lasts way

Sharing is sometimes

Mary Catherine Bateson

memorable peace knowledge

Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.

Mary Catherine Bateson

coherence patterns answers

Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.

Mary Catherine Bateson

stopping memorable inspirational

Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.

Mary Catherine Bateson

culinary cooking food