The impeded stream

The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. 

- Wendell Berry 

The quote above has been in my e-mail sig file for a number of years - and now and then someone comments that they like the sentiment. The selection is from this poem:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

"The Real Work" by Wendell Berry, from Standing by Words. © 1983

Berry speaks for me. In my work I don't know what to do on a very regular basis. I am smart enough. I have a lot of experience. I can certainly sound authoritative when I need to. I like to believe I have acquired some modicum of wisdom through my experiences.

But more often than not, I am honestly baffled by new situations, new people, new problems. Much of technology use in education is about making it up as you go along since there are often no best practices established. 

One of my all time favorite articles appeared in Phi Delta Kappan in 2005.  In "Embracing Confusion:  What Leaders Do When They Don’t Know What to Do", Jentz and Murphy write:

... confusion is not a weakness to be ashamed of but a regular and inevitable condition of leadership. By learning to embrace their confusion, managers are able to set in motion a constructive process for addressing baffling organizational issues. In fact, confusion turns out to be a fruitful environment in which the best managers thrive by using the instability around them to open up better lines of communication, test their old assumptions and values against changing realities, and develop more creative approaches to problem solving.

Too many leaders feel the need to know it all and know it all the time. And too often their self-confidence (or thinly disguised lack of self-confidence) leads to poor decisions based on a closed mind.

Embrace your inner confusion, listen to the impeded streams in your life.