We have to be who we are to be a participant in any relationship.

When it comes to relationships selflessness is as destructive as selfishness.

It is entirely a matter of knowing how to situate first-person-singular — I — within first-person-plural — We — and to allow a second person singular — You — to do the same.

This goes for relationship between people, but also for relationships between people and  things.

To be selfless in creation — to set yourself aside to do what is called for —  is to make trash. It is crucial to invest yourself in the things you make.

To be selfish in creation — to fail craft by not listen to the material — is to offend nature, including human nature, and gives artifice a bad name.

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When we do design research we are not collecting bits of data that will speak for itself later if we suppress our subjectivity. Not only is this approach naive, it is unnatural, alienating and highly conducive to creating the projection it seeks to prevent.

To be good researchers we have to be there, in situ, listening, letting the present reality speak for itself while it is present, letting it teach us while it is there with us able to tutor us. We have to struggling to understand and to become fluent and articulate by seeing how the reality articulates itself. And we have to be changed by what we learn, from baffled outsider to fluent participant. It is our fluency that will guide our introduction of new elements into the situation, not the data we record, chop up into individual sentences, then categorize into labeled heaps.

What does the learning look like? Like a student struggling to understand, trying out different ways to grasp the material, making mistakes, accepting correction, trying again. Frustration, then light bulbs go off. Ideas erupt spontaneously. This is also what science looks like, not like white-coated gods standing above reality like objective eyes-in-the-sky.

To learn is a humble activity.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” — Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind