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Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.

Mary Catherine Bateson

A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Care Management Medicine Surprise Training
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

Believe Learning Myself Talk Understand
The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Human Learning Metaphor Species Story Thinking
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

Answer Finding Fragment Learning Pattern Pleasure Share
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

Commitment Decision Life Morning People Pieces Yourself
The Christian tradition was passed on to me as a great rich mixture, a bouillabaisse of human imagination and wonder brewed from the richness of individual lives.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Greatness Imagination Live Tradition
Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Affirmation Education Existing Member Tradition
Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Creativity Establishment Improvisation Way
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

Ability Color Culture Vision World
The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Change Family Metaphor Understand
The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Capacity Commitment Democracy Essential
Jazz exemplifies artistic activity that is at once individual and communal, performance that is both repetitive and innovative, each participant sometimes providing background support and sometimes flying free.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Activity Artistic Community Fly Freedom Provide
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

Dance Important Improvisation Join Learning Ourselves Responsible Step
In many ways, constancy is an illusion.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Constant Illusion
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

Goodness Life Place Remain Willing
Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Philosophy Retrospect Visible