All the time we are awake life is marked by experience. The world gives us sensations and situations to respond to, we react, and the world reacts back. This ongoing transaction fills our days.
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But some experiences are more rewarding than others. Experiences tend to run the spectrum from boring and barely worth our attention—to scattered, incomplete and unsatisfying—to routine (whether mindless routine or pleasantly familiar routine)—to busy and focused (with various levels of challenge and satisfaction)—to those that are the most engaging, even radiating with meaning and purpose, lifting you up, making you feel truly alive. These are the kind you want to keep with you.
The experiences filled with meaning are the ones we can refer to as aesthetic. These set the bar. In fact, they inspire the practice of art (which, fundamentally, is our way of distilling experience), inspire people to strive for the highest achievements in all domains, and keep us going through the routine, hard work, or boredom we inevitably experience along the way. Just knowing aesthetic experiences are out there to be had can be inspiration enough to resisting slipping into the doldrums.
The connection of engaging everyday experiences to art and aesthetics was made most famously by philosopher John Dewey in his 1934 work, Art as Experience. There, he explored the question of the source of art in human behavior, and saw it as originating in everyday experience, ranging from “how the tense grace of the ball-player infects the on-looking crowd; . . . the delight of the housewife in tending to her plants . . .; the zest of the spectator in poking the wood burning on the hearth and in watching the darting flames and crumbling coals.”
What can these everyday experiences have in common with the David of Michelangelo, Picasso’s Guernica, Debussy’s Preludes, Malick’s Days of Heaven, or Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina? The answer has to do with a few critical qualities of experiences that drive us toward the reward of meaningful engagement.
Including the encounters with works of art that we love, but definitely not restricted to these, aesthetic experiences have a coherence—a beginning, middle, and end—that sets them apart from the normal flow of experience. This begins with an intention based on (a) a need, desire, tension, or puzzlement that stimulates attention, an attention that is further driven by (b) the anticipation of a meaningful outcome that makes the experience compelling—winning the game, a garden full of flowers, a warm fire. These experiences are also colored by (c) deep engagement and concern for (d) immediate actions and sensual details, and not just thoughts about reasons and purposes, which may in fact be temporarily forgotten, like time itself. Finally, unlike much of our experience, which can feel incomplete or lacking in some way, an aesthetic experience includes (e) a conclusion or consummation, a resolution that ties all the moments of the experience together--gives it coherence--and makes the effort (which often includes hard work) worth it. Moreover, the resolution often feels profoundly meaningful. Nearly all good narratives have such a pattern, and non-narrative art can create the same experience within us, but many everyday experiences show this pattern as well.
Each of these qualities require more unpacking and exploration, as does the overall quality of coherence, and might be the subject of future posts. But for now, let’s conclude by examining a couple experiences to show how one is aesthetic, and one is definitely not, and also look at the contributing factors.
It would be easy to choose two highly contrasting situations, like climbing a mountain and washing windows, for example, but let’s choose very similar situations in an environment where where experiences tend to exhibit a wide range of aesthetic engagement—the workplace. The situations described below are fictitious, and any resemblance to real situations, current or past, is purely coincidental.
1.
You are asked to take on a new work assignment. You have no lack of work, so at first you wince at the request. But you trust the person asking for it (manager or client, take your pick), know that the assignment is not a whim, and as you study the details, you agree it has value and will bring multiple benefits. You also see some interesting challenges that will offer you an opportunity to learn new things, so you say yes. Your first task is to decide on the approach you will take, which will require buy-in by the stakeholders. Through careful examination of the goals, the stakeholder needs, the constraints, and similar assignments taken on by colleagues, you are able to develop both a good plan and a good argument for it. The buy-in is achieved after a series of challenges that force you to defend the approach. As you begin to implement the plan, you become convinced that the outcome would be improved if you adapt your approach, and this creative problem solving is enjoyable enough to compel you to work late many nights. When you deliver the final result, it is well received, but not without some additional modifications. You think back to when you were first given the assignment and how it has evolved, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment to know that you were able to see it through this evolution. You also look forward to seeing how what you learned during the project will help you in future efforts, and perhaps win you additional interesting and challenging assignments.
I hope this scenario was not too unfamiliar, but certainly most workplace experiences don’t reach this level. Let’s rewind and look at the other end of the spectrum.
2.
You are asked to take on a new work assignment. You have no lack of work, and so you wince at the request. The person asking you (manager or client, take your pick) has a reputation for quickly responding to upper management requests with half-baked ideas for the sake of quick compliance. You feel that this might be one of those black-hole assignments, one that will take excessive time and energy, but give back little and have little chance of success. You are told the plan and given little leverage to adapt it with your own ideas, so you cannot help but feel a lack of conviction when you have to present it to the stakeholders. Predictably, it is shot full of holes by the skeptics who offer no alternatives, and equally so by supporters who have completely different (and better) ideas that might have more impact. Trying to please everyone, you allow the plan to become a mélange that will hopefully address everyone’s input. Before the plan can be implemented, management stalls, unable to see how it could address their original goals, which have changed anyway. No one cancels it, but no one pushes for it either, and so it withers away and is eventually forgotten. You move on to hopefully better projects.
I suspect we have all had such experiences in our work, unfortunately. Aesthetic experiences are hard to come by, especially when critical contributing factors are lacking. What are these factors?
Some have to do with things that are mostly outside our control, the Situational qualities, and some have to do with the ones we bring to the experience, our Individual qualities. The diagram below depicts a rather good day/week/month without boredom or scattered activity, and lists the qualities that make it good. But note that, as novelists since modernist times have shown us, experience is not really a timeline, and aesthetic experiences are not just moments we can mark in time. Sometimes only with time does it dawn on us how meaningful an experience has become, perhaps even long after the events have concluded.
Qualities of Situations
Immediacy. Some situations absorb us their details--not just sights and sounds to perceive, but also ideas to comprehend, emotions to feel, and tasks to accomplish. Immediacy takes our focus away from ourselves and to the world itself.
Malleability. Some experiences allow give and take–the opportunity for us to color the experience, to shape it with the tools we bring to it, and to contribute to its unfolding. The most powerful situations are provisional, with the final meaning and outcomes to be determined at least partly by us.
Compellingess. A compelling situation contains intrigue and uncertainty. It makes us curious about what happens or can happen next. We are reluctant to let it go.
Resonance. Some experiences both connect to our present lives and leave a residue of thoughts and feelings that have an impact on future experiences. Sometimes they recast the past with new understanding. Aesthetic experiences create reverberant echoes in all directions.
Coherence. When life moves from one thing to another without connection, the disjointedness is unraveling. Coherence, on the other hand, is almost synonymous with meaning, and it is most powerful if it emerges when we are following through on an intention. In fact, the most rewarding kind of coherence is one that is not just given--like an easily perceived symmetry, but one that requires a struggle before being revealed.
Qualities of Individuals
Intent. Each of us has individual goals and interests, as well as unique attitudes, values, hopes, beliefs, likes, dislikes, and assumptions about our role in the world. All of these are subsumed by the concept of intent by phenomenologists like Husserl (1982/1999). While our intentions exist in any case, when we are aware of and honest about our intentionality, we are also more open to the influence of experience and more able to gain from it. This is perhaps especially when it challenges us.
Presence. As Woody Allen aptly put it, 80 percent of success is showing up. I agree, but to achieve an experience that reaches aesthetic proportions we need something beyond physical and mental presence. The other “twenty percent” includes empathy and being genuine, which are a little bit harder to achieve. These three types of presence are called being-there, being-with, and being-one’s-self by philosopher Martin Heidegger (1962). Presence makes us more responsible, able to draw on our pasts and utilize our will to imagine and change our future.
Openness. In American politics, openness is called being a flip-flopper, as if it is shameful to admit you can still learn from experience. Aesthetic experiences, if we want them, demand an openness to submit to the challenges offered and draw upon the opportunities of the situation and the perspectives and support of others to learn new things. This is not flip-flopping, this is integrity.
Trust. To fully engage in a situation, we need to trust that it has something to offer. This includes faith that positive outcomes can occur – along with the willingness to suspend disbelief when these outcomes are in doubt – and forgiveness when the experience falls short of expectations, knowing that with effort, it can be turned around.
This list of aesthetic-potential qualities is probably not exhaustive, and the qualities are certainly not independent of each other. But hopefully they are compelling and coherent enough to keep this line of inquiry going, which is all that is needed. Do your favorite works of art have these qualities? When you enjoy them, do you bring your individual qualities to the experience? Does your work ever rise to this level?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Portions of this post are based on Learning Experience as Transaction: A Framework for Instructional Design (Parrish, Wilson, and Dunlap, 2010)
But some experiences are more rewarding than others. Experiences tend to run the spectrum from boring and barely worth our attention—to scattered, incomplete and unsatisfying—to routine (whether mindless routine or pleasantly familiar routine)—to busy and focused (with various levels of challenge and satisfaction)—to those that are the most engaging, even radiating with meaning and purpose, lifting you up, making you feel truly alive. These are the kind you want to keep with you.
The experiences filled with meaning are the ones we can refer to as aesthetic. These set the bar. In fact, they inspire the practice of art (which, fundamentally, is our way of distilling experience), inspire people to strive for the highest achievements in all domains, and keep us going through the routine, hard work, or boredom we inevitably experience along the way. Just knowing aesthetic experiences are out there to be had can be inspiration enough to resisting slipping into the doldrums.
The connection of engaging everyday experiences to art and aesthetics was made most famously by philosopher John Dewey in his 1934 work, Art as Experience. There, he explored the question of the source of art in human behavior, and saw it as originating in everyday experience, ranging from “how the tense grace of the ball-player infects the on-looking crowd; . . . the delight of the housewife in tending to her plants . . .; the zest of the spectator in poking the wood burning on the hearth and in watching the darting flames and crumbling coals.”
 |
| Photo by Lukas Riebling |
Including the encounters with works of art that we love, but definitely not restricted to these, aesthetic experiences have a coherence—a beginning, middle, and end—that sets them apart from the normal flow of experience. This begins with an intention based on (a) a need, desire, tension, or puzzlement that stimulates attention, an attention that is further driven by (b) the anticipation of a meaningful outcome that makes the experience compelling—winning the game, a garden full of flowers, a warm fire. These experiences are also colored by (c) deep engagement and concern for (d) immediate actions and sensual details, and not just thoughts about reasons and purposes, which may in fact be temporarily forgotten, like time itself. Finally, unlike much of our experience, which can feel incomplete or lacking in some way, an aesthetic experience includes (e) a conclusion or consummation, a resolution that ties all the moments of the experience together--gives it coherence--and makes the effort (which often includes hard work) worth it. Moreover, the resolution often feels profoundly meaningful. Nearly all good narratives have such a pattern, and non-narrative art can create the same experience within us, but many everyday experiences show this pattern as well.
Each of these qualities require more unpacking and exploration, as does the overall quality of coherence, and might be the subject of future posts. But for now, let’s conclude by examining a couple experiences to show how one is aesthetic, and one is definitely not, and also look at the contributing factors.
It would be easy to choose two highly contrasting situations, like climbing a mountain and washing windows, for example, but let’s choose very similar situations in an environment where where experiences tend to exhibit a wide range of aesthetic engagement—the workplace. The situations described below are fictitious, and any resemblance to real situations, current or past, is purely coincidental.
1.
You are asked to take on a new work assignment. You have no lack of work, so at first you wince at the request. But you trust the person asking for it (manager or client, take your pick), know that the assignment is not a whim, and as you study the details, you agree it has value and will bring multiple benefits. You also see some interesting challenges that will offer you an opportunity to learn new things, so you say yes. Your first task is to decide on the approach you will take, which will require buy-in by the stakeholders. Through careful examination of the goals, the stakeholder needs, the constraints, and similar assignments taken on by colleagues, you are able to develop both a good plan and a good argument for it. The buy-in is achieved after a series of challenges that force you to defend the approach. As you begin to implement the plan, you become convinced that the outcome would be improved if you adapt your approach, and this creative problem solving is enjoyable enough to compel you to work late many nights. When you deliver the final result, it is well received, but not without some additional modifications. You think back to when you were first given the assignment and how it has evolved, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment to know that you were able to see it through this evolution. You also look forward to seeing how what you learned during the project will help you in future efforts, and perhaps win you additional interesting and challenging assignments.
I hope this scenario was not too unfamiliar, but certainly most workplace experiences don’t reach this level. Let’s rewind and look at the other end of the spectrum.
2.
You are asked to take on a new work assignment. You have no lack of work, and so you wince at the request. The person asking you (manager or client, take your pick) has a reputation for quickly responding to upper management requests with half-baked ideas for the sake of quick compliance. You feel that this might be one of those black-hole assignments, one that will take excessive time and energy, but give back little and have little chance of success. You are told the plan and given little leverage to adapt it with your own ideas, so you cannot help but feel a lack of conviction when you have to present it to the stakeholders. Predictably, it is shot full of holes by the skeptics who offer no alternatives, and equally so by supporters who have completely different (and better) ideas that might have more impact. Trying to please everyone, you allow the plan to become a mélange that will hopefully address everyone’s input. Before the plan can be implemented, management stalls, unable to see how it could address their original goals, which have changed anyway. No one cancels it, but no one pushes for it either, and so it withers away and is eventually forgotten. You move on to hopefully better projects.
I suspect we have all had such experiences in our work, unfortunately. Aesthetic experiences are hard to come by, especially when critical contributing factors are lacking. What are these factors?
Some have to do with things that are mostly outside our control, the Situational qualities, and some have to do with the ones we bring to the experience, our Individual qualities. The diagram below depicts a rather good day/week/month without boredom or scattered activity, and lists the qualities that make it good. But note that, as novelists since modernist times have shown us, experience is not really a timeline, and aesthetic experiences are not just moments we can mark in time. Sometimes only with time does it dawn on us how meaningful an experience has become, perhaps even long after the events have concluded.
 |
| From Parrish, Wilson, and Dunlap (2010) |
Qualities of Situations
Immediacy. Some situations absorb us their details--not just sights and sounds to perceive, but also ideas to comprehend, emotions to feel, and tasks to accomplish. Immediacy takes our focus away from ourselves and to the world itself.
Malleability. Some experiences allow give and take–the opportunity for us to color the experience, to shape it with the tools we bring to it, and to contribute to its unfolding. The most powerful situations are provisional, with the final meaning and outcomes to be determined at least partly by us.
Compellingess. A compelling situation contains intrigue and uncertainty. It makes us curious about what happens or can happen next. We are reluctant to let it go.
Resonance. Some experiences both connect to our present lives and leave a residue of thoughts and feelings that have an impact on future experiences. Sometimes they recast the past with new understanding. Aesthetic experiences create reverberant echoes in all directions.
Coherence. When life moves from one thing to another without connection, the disjointedness is unraveling. Coherence, on the other hand, is almost synonymous with meaning, and it is most powerful if it emerges when we are following through on an intention. In fact, the most rewarding kind of coherence is one that is not just given--like an easily perceived symmetry, but one that requires a struggle before being revealed.
Qualities of Individuals
Intent. Each of us has individual goals and interests, as well as unique attitudes, values, hopes, beliefs, likes, dislikes, and assumptions about our role in the world. All of these are subsumed by the concept of intent by phenomenologists like Husserl (1982/1999). While our intentions exist in any case, when we are aware of and honest about our intentionality, we are also more open to the influence of experience and more able to gain from it. This is perhaps especially when it challenges us.
Presence. As Woody Allen aptly put it, 80 percent of success is showing up. I agree, but to achieve an experience that reaches aesthetic proportions we need something beyond physical and mental presence. The other “twenty percent” includes empathy and being genuine, which are a little bit harder to achieve. These three types of presence are called being-there, being-with, and being-one’s-self by philosopher Martin Heidegger (1962). Presence makes us more responsible, able to draw on our pasts and utilize our will to imagine and change our future.
Openness. In American politics, openness is called being a flip-flopper, as if it is shameful to admit you can still learn from experience. Aesthetic experiences, if we want them, demand an openness to submit to the challenges offered and draw upon the opportunities of the situation and the perspectives and support of others to learn new things. This is not flip-flopping, this is integrity.
Trust. To fully engage in a situation, we need to trust that it has something to offer. This includes faith that positive outcomes can occur – along with the willingness to suspend disbelief when these outcomes are in doubt – and forgiveness when the experience falls short of expectations, knowing that with effort, it can be turned around.
This list of aesthetic-potential qualities is probably not exhaustive, and the qualities are certainly not independent of each other. But hopefully they are compelling and coherent enough to keep this line of inquiry going, which is all that is needed. Do your favorite works of art have these qualities? When you enjoy them, do you bring your individual qualities to the experience? Does your work ever rise to this level?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Portions of this post are based on Learning Experience as Transaction: A Framework for Instructional Design (Parrish, Wilson, and Dunlap, 2010)
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