As I look back over this series on transition, what springs to my attention is the many ways that I’m learning to learn. We learn from our actions for next time. We learn when we assume we should be teaching. We learn from our feelings and through our feelings. And we learn from mistakes – ours and others. This series has captured a few different ways or tools to help me learn. And the focus of this learning has been on the self, self awareness. But self-awareness on its own isn’t the goal.

Self-awareness goes hand in hand with other-awareness.

There is a wider goal in self-awareness than just getting to know one’s self. Learning about ourselves is part of learning about a new culture. As we’ve been speaking about going to Cambodia, we’ve used the language of learning; “we’re going to Cambodia as learners.” But we don’t just do our learning when we arrive. Part of our learning about Cambodia will come from our learning about ourselves. The self-awareness learning we’ve done in transition is ‘perfect’ preparation for learning a new culture.

See you in the next series.