Learning resides on the boundary between boredom and anxiety. Our inborn sense of wonder and playful curiosity provide a generalized forward momentum and orientation towards learning, but openness to a specific learning experience always requires a certain threshold of intrinsic interest and challenge. We shut down if the task in hand appears too trivial or—at the opposite pole—entirely beyond our capabilities.

We tend to resist the suspension of heartfelt notions about our world and ourselves. Fear can shut down and inhibit learning, but, in the right dosage, risk and uncertainty can be exhilarating and may enhance engagement and connection.

 

Learning is child’s play in the sense that it involves being lost in the moment. Such periods of deep engagement seem to occur below the level of conscious awareness. They are characterized by unfettered connectedness and a different sense of the passage of time.

Strangely, the same level of engagement often occurs quite unexpectedly during semi-automatic activities. Creative inspiration may come at the strangest times. A lot is happening under the surface. We can be ambushed by a solution when we least expect it. We recall a name or a fact only after we stop racking our brains in conscious searching. It is as if we can catch a glimpse of something more easily out of the corner of our eye than by gazing straight at it.

This can be explained partially by the notion that incommensurability cannot be worked through by linear thinking in an obsolete paradigm. Trying harder can actually make things worse as we become more entrenched.

A liminal state of mind is possible if we can somehow let go of engaging the problem head-on. During such profoundly enigmatic moments some kind of cognitive shifting or reconfiguration is at work. The “Aha!” moment is a coming up for air—an exhilarating return to critical distance—as the efficacy of a new configuration is rapidly confirmed and its possibilities elaborated.