Critical moments, as we have discussed, can happen spontaneously when we simply bump into something that powerfully contradicts an unquestioned meaning perspective. A very simple and compelling example came to me when I was in my early thirties. A woman I knew simply asked me why I spent time and effort in brushing back my hair when that very hair curled in what she saw as a lovely way. I had never thought about it, but at that moment, I realized my mother always told me to get it brushed. For some reason I didn't know nor understand, she thought it looked "messy" as it naturally came, so I spent a great deal of useless time and effort trying to control something that was good enough let alone. I stopped brushing my hair, which never worked in the first place, and let the curl come in, just naturally fall into place. It felt wonderful. It felt liberating. In a minor key, it felt transformative to let myself return to a natural state where I belonged. Once again, there's was nothing wrong with me.
Eleanor asked me about it the next time she saw me, but even she didn't know why she thought it messy. She let hers curl. I haven't brushed the curling hair since. It sounds funny, but an the other hand, all my life, I have known people who either had their naturally curly hair straightened or people who had naturally straight hair curled. Each side held a meaning perspective that told them their natural state was unacceptable, something wrong with them, and they spent time and money denying that natural state. Such a meaning perspective stops being minor when people seek change through higher and higher levels of plastic surgery.
Jack Mezirow, the originator of the phrase and formal concept of transformative learning came to the recognition of meaning perspectives and the transformative when Edie, the woman to whom he was married, returned to formal learning at a community college. During her participation, he saw her question assumptions about herself and make many new choices about herself and her life as a result. The courses she attended did not offer anything directly like the transformative in them. She just learned and understood new things generally, and she found the stimulus to question and critically reflect on that which had served as meaning perspectives that defined parts of her self-image and thus her life. In the terms I offer here, she returned to her becoming self and shifted her identity and ego accordingly.
We may also find such challenges to meaning perspectives, such critical moments, offered directly and purposefully by someone else, someone like a teacher or even a child. I found many meaning perspectives critically raised when I became a father of Gavin, a one-year-old. I was forty-four when this happened, and it felt difficult and emancipating both to make the choices that my critical reflection on those perspectives caused. Thinking about it now, that made Gavin a teacher in my life and a very important one at that. We meet possible teachers every day which is one reason why we can experience critical moments every day.
In a more formal setting and manner, I tried to introduce students to the experience of critical moments directly. I did this in a number of ways. The primary way I accomplished such critical moments came in simply how I treated them—with unconditional positive regard. As part of that, I surrendered my "position power[117]" of grading students' work and gave the process over to them. This caused original joy in students, then often confusion and consternation. Some students complained quite loudly in class and told me that grading was part of my job. That meaning perspective about my position power of grading and thus domination got questioned when I responded that I certainly agreed that my job meant I responded to their work, but establishing its value really belonged to them. I asked a simple question, such questions can often lead to transformative learning: "In our lives, whose opinion matters most?" Students responded, usually after some pause, that their opinion mattered most. That being the case, it seemed reasonable for them to evaluate the work they did. If they didn't feel confident in exercising that ability, the ability to correctly value their own work, our class was a good and safe place to begin their practice.
A former student came by with his family for a visit to our home. We have stayed in touch during the more than ten years since we shared classes together. He once again remembered the experience of trust and growing confidence he felt by grading his own work. More importantly, he felt that he could express himself freely for the first time in his life, and by doing so, he discovered that he liked what he thought. He discovered his mind worked well and held values and ideas that would make his life work for him after years of wandering around rather aimlessly. In essence, he discovered that when I removed the coercive force of grading and the dominator model in our classroom, he experienced how well he could see and judge the quality of his work and the choices that went into that work. That began to open him to seeing that he was more than capable of making choices about his life and his career. He felt liberated then and even now by that knowledge. He runs his own restaurant business with that very idea in mind. He leads but he doesn't dominate, and the people that work for him show him loyalty and bring their original ideas and energy to work every day.
Lately, I have brought the transformative and a critical moment to students by asking a question that we looked at before:
"What would happen if you found out that every negative thought and feeling you ever had about yourself were unfounded, unfair, and untrue?"