Becoming acknowledges children’s ongoing learning and development. It emphasises learning to participate fully and actively in society.
My Time, Our Place: Framework for School Age Care in Australia
Neurodiversity is where potential and possibilities lie. We need to embrace our collective flow, our differences and our ways of becoming.
I’ve been learning to live with what is,
More patient with the process,
To love what is becoming,
And the questions that keep returning.
You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?
“Hogfather” by Terry Pratchett, full quote, Death’s speech in Hogfather (Discworld) – YouTube
A dictionary meaning of ‘becoming’ as a noun is ‘… as a coming to be’ (Landau, 1984). This adds to the notion of being a sense of future, even though in many ways becom- ing is dependent on what people do and are in the present and on our history, in terms of cultural development.
‘Life is a process. We are a process. Everything that has happened in our lives … is an integral part of our becoming’ (Wilson Schaef, 1990).
In Kielhofner’s Health Through Occupation, Fidler (1983) discusses three aspects of becoming: (i) becoming I; (ii) becoming competent; and (iii) becoming a social being. In all these scenarios, becoming holds the notions of potential and growth, of transformation and self actualization. Indeed, one dictionary defines potential as ‘… capable of being or becoming; ability or talent not yet in full use’ (Makins, 1996). Occupational therapists are in the business of helping people transform their lives by facilitating talents and abilities not yet in full use through enabling them to do and to be. We are part of their process of becoming and I believe that we should constantly bear in mind the importance of this task. To achieve well being, individual people or communities need to be enabled towards what they are best fitted and want to become.
“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby.
But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit, 1921.
The view of children’s lives as characterised by belonging, being and becoming that underpins the Early
Years Learning Framework is fundamental to the My Time, Our Place – Framework for School Age Care in Australia.
- Experiencing belonging – knowing where and with whom you belong – is integral to human existence. In school age care, and throughout life, relationships are crucial to a sense of belonging. Children belong first to a family, a cultural group, a neighbourhood and a wider community. Belonging acknowledges children’s interdependence with others and the basis of relationships in defining identities. Belonging is central to being and becoming in that it shapes who children are and who they can become.
- Childhood is a time to be, to seek and make meaning of the world. Being recognises the significance of the here and now in children’s lives. It is about the present and them knowing themselves, building and maintaining relationships with others, engaging with life’s joys and complexities, and meeting challenges in everyday life. During the school age years children develop their interests and explore possibilities. School age care settings give children time and place to collaborate with educators to organise activities and opportunities meaningful to them.
- Children’s identities, knowledge, understandings, capacities, skills and relationships change during childhood. They are shaped by many different events and circumstances. Becoming acknowledges children’s ongoing learning and development. It emphasises learning to participate fully and actively in society.
My Time, Our Place: Framework for School Age Care in Australia
Knowing is a matter of part of the world making itself intelligible to another part… We do not obtain knowledge by standing outside of the world; we know because ‘we’ are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming. (Barad, 2003, p.829)
In a participatory universe, the creative potential is the deity that supplants objectivity and rational thinking; the machine is replaced with wondrous meaning. This description evokes a spirit of perpetual movement, uncertain yet full of potential and inspiration. States of being are but temporary as the primary process is the phenomenon of becoming.
“Becoming what?” you might ask. But that very question is seeking a “thing” type of answer. What are the waves in the ocean becoming?
For all conscious entities (and there is a reasonable argument that all matter is indeed sentient, a belief known as panpsychism), the process of becoming puts us squarely in this new paradigm of personal evolution and participatory change. Much of my work is devoted to catalyzing and enabling people to change.
The process of becoming is forgiving. In the flow of becoming, we are no longer rooted in the hardship of fear, insecurity, or the notions of mistakes. A fuller participation in our unfolding life assists us in the art of living well. Becoming is open and unlimited; being is structured and limiting.
As the artist crafts their art, so might we look at our life. Learning to live artfully has us see our lives as a process open to inquiry and learning, always receptive to new meaning. Thus, we are always becoming.
It would also be helpful if we looked at our relationships from this flow of becoming. Our tendency is to see one another as fixed, and hence our relationship is stuck as well. As two individuals, each devoted to their becoming, engage one another, we have a relationship that is indeed evolving. Contrast that with two beings, locked in a relationship burdened by their states of being.
The common aim of the arts of democratic humanism is thus to cultivate in every individual the art of making and remaking relations in a pluriverse of constant becoming.
