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A disgruntled reflection on my own life as a sort of desperate improvisation in which I was constantly trying to make something coherent from conflicting elements to fit rapidly changing settings.

Mary Catherine Bateson

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

Clarity Early Loss Moments
Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Eat Food Human
The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Death End Meaning Story Time
Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Demand Give Share
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
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
Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Creativity Establishment Improvisation Way
Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Continue Fluid Live Reality
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
The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Human Learning Metaphor Species Story Thinking
As we age we have not only to readdress earlier developmental crises but also somehow to find the way to three affirmations that may seem to conflict. … We have to affirm our own life. We have to affirm our own death. And we have to affirm love, both given and received.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Address Affirmation Conflict Development Early Finding Ourselves
Monotony and repetition are characteristic of many parts of life, but these do not become sources of conscious discomfort until novelty and entertainment are built up as positive experiences.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Character Entertainment Experience Life Positive Repetition
We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Known Learning Willing