What if…

You woke up every morning without any idea of what would happen to you?

In a way, of course, you DON’T know, but what if…the world and your place in it were totally up for grabs every day,

if the world under your feet broke apart and fell away from under you...

What if you woke up and

you felt like a dung beetle and the people around you--your family, your friends even strangers--treated you like a dung beetle?

What if you discovered yourself turned into

a laurel tree a pond of water a flower beside a pond a weeping willow a vulture a wolf a pile of salt

and everything you thought you knewsuddenly did not apply?

What if your best friend

began to treat you like an enemy

undermined your ability to succeed

did not recognize you could not understand

what you were saying

How do you know

How to dress? How to act? What to do when you

wake up? When to rest? When to run and hide? Who your friends are

on any given day?

How you will behave in a given situation?

What to do to get a good grade in this class?

Whether to work or play?

Laugh or cry?

How do you know the weather without watching the weather

report? What if you stuck your

head out of the window in the middle of a St Louis July day

and were caughtin a FREEZINGBLIZZARD

Or what if the polar ice capsmelted?

Okay, sure disasters do happen to people all over the world everyday...

EarthquakesAccidentsHurricanes“Downsizing”Illness

But Most MONDAYS you wake up with certain expectations for the day which will, more or less, be fulfilled during the day.

You will wake up at a certain time, go to school a certain way with a certain somebody, have certain conversations, meet in certain classes in a certain order at certain times...

Saturday’s arrive with their own expectations. Summer comes with its own expectations. Winter comes, with its patterns; Fall and Spring, likewise.

Your friends and family will treat you in a more or less predictable manner. You will see and be seen as a ninth grade student at MICDS in 2003.

You establish your reputation, and certain behaviors will be expected of you, and you will, more or less, fulfill these expectations every day.

The world is a mixed bag of patterned, predicable behaviors and utter surprises. But we USE and DEPEND UPON an underlying regularity and stability to get through the day without

If nothing were predictable or dependable, each of us would be filled with constant anxiety and dread

Going to Pieces!

If everything were utterly predictable and nothing changed, we could not grow, and it would be hard to distinguish reality from our ideas about it

We get through life with the help of MODELS of the

world A model is a bet, an expectation, a pattern we

impose on the world in order to understand this constantly shifting REAL WORLD. It is a structure we give to chaos.

Each of us has a model

of what a friend is of each of our friends of our teachers of weekdays of weekends of the seasons of the past even of ourselves

A bet, an expectation,

We bet our friends will engage in certain behaviors

Certain teachers will do certain things

Politicians will behave in a certain way

Rock stars will behave in another way

Religious figures will behave in one way

Hardened criminals can be counted on to repeat their offenses

Fellow students will more or less fulfill the reputations they have established

REMEMBER

The TWO HARDEST THINGS IN LIFE are Changing Directions and Starting Over.– You must overcome inertia

• (Your model of yourself)

– You will encounter friction• (other people’s models of you)

Your reputation is a model that people have of you…a bet that you will behave in certain ways in the future,based on past behavior

Not Just Individuals

Our whole culture shares certain models, which other cultures do not have and do not share. We see things in a certain, given way. These models allow us …even force us..to see things in a certain way.

One of the abilities we treasure about our culture is the idea of CRITICAL THINKING. It is part of our way of seeing the world, part of our model.CRITICAL THINKING asks us to look at our models...

Critical Thinking

As if we stood OUTSIDE of them, and to see that they are “Only” Models.

Our culture may also be distinguished bythe fact that it has MANY MODELS tocall upon to SEE an event or situation

We live in a culture filled with many, sometimes conflicting,

models Besides your ordinary,

private models, there are several religious models, a smattering of political models, as well as different scientific models--(depending on if you are looking at BIG or small parts of the universe…)

These models may or may not agree with one another. E.g.– Quantum mechanics vs

Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity

So even though neither can see or make sense of the whole of the universe,we USE THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE USEFUL

Shifting Contexts

You may have many models of yourself..many bets, or expectations of yourself, depending upon where you are and with whom...