A key to learning is transmission. While it is a mutual act it isn’t always a visible or intentional one. Someone is transmitting and someone is receiving and yet the learning can only happen when there is engagement in learning.

In this process, an underestimated part of learning is the one to put words onto it.

We often believe that it happens automatically. In a way, it happens. Toddlers learn words as they appear and as they can relate them to something. But as they learn to connect their own emotions with words it’s the attention of the caregiver that will help make the emotion accessible and recognizable.

When it comes to problem-solving, it’s the ability to describe the ideas and images we have in mind, which allows us to work together on the problem instead of leaving the person alone in handling it.

As our workshop came to its end today I was reminded of the challenge to find words to express the experience we lived. It means to connect with the individual experiences, to put them into a context giving them meaning, to select the relevant experience, to choose a way to describe it, to find how to deal with different cultures and to accept that it will be understood by others in their very own way.

It’s never as accurate as we’d like it to be. But the effort to learn the words needed makes it memorable.