Learning, Teaching, and Living

“You know how to walk? You know how to think?
No one does, but they do it anyway.”
—Alan Watts

There are moments when something shifts. A gesture finds its natural arc. A phrase discovers its breath. A understanding arrives not through explanation but recognition—as if remembering something always known but temporarily forgotten. These moments reveal patterns: not rules imposed from without, but shapes that emerge from within.

This page traces an evolving understanding of how patterns work in learning, teaching, and living. It draws from Christopher Alexander’s architectural insights, from years of musical practice with Jordi Savall, from the daily work of attention that shapes this site. But mostly it emerges from watching—how understanding dawns, how practice deepens, how the invisible becomes real.

What Is a Pattern?

A pattern is a recurring configuration that resolves tension. Alexander discovered this in architecture: how a window seat solves the conflict between wanting shelter and wanting connection to the outside. How a courtyard creates privacy while remaining open to sky.

In life and learning, patterns appear wherever forces meet: - The need for structure and the need for freedom - The desire to understand and the mystery of not knowing - The effort required and the ease desired

Patterns aren’t prescriptions. They’re recognitions of what already works, what already lives.

Living Patterns vs Dead Patterns

Niels Bohr observed: “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” This paradox illuminates the difference between patterns that generate life and those that constrain it.

Living patterns: - Generate energy rather than consume it - Create connections rather than divisions - Adapt to context while maintaining identity - Contain their own guidance

Dead patterns: - Require constant external force - Fragment rather than integrate - Rigidify regardless of circumstance - Create dependence rather than capability

The same pattern can be living or dead depending on how it’s held. A daily practice becomes dead when it’s mere repetition, living when it’s relationship.

Pattern Recognition as Practice

Steve Jobs spoke of the carpenter who uses beautiful wood even for the back of the drawer, where no one will see. This invisible fidelity exemplifies pattern recognition as practice—attending to wholeness especially where it’s unseen.

In my own work, pattern recognition appears as: - Noticing when attention shifts quality - Sensing the moment before understanding arrives - Recognizing recurring shapes across domains - Trusting what emerges over what’s planned

As John Berger wrote about love requiring the beloved’s unpredictability—true pattern recognition means seeing freshly each time, not imposing yesterday’s pattern on today’s reality.

The Pattern of Patterns

Certain meta-patterns govern how patterns themselves behave:

Emergence Over Imposition

Patterns reveal themselves through patient observation rather than forceful analysis. Like Rebecca Solnit’s hope that makes the present inhabitable by orienting toward the future, patterns often work indirectly.

Part Contains Whole

In any living system, each fragment contains the entire pattern. A single gesture can embody an entire approach. One moment of real attention contains all of contemplative practice.

Spiral Return

We return to the same patterns at different depths. What seems like repetition is actually revolution—coming back to the same place with new eyes.

Pattern, Presence, Practice

Three words that have become a personal compass:

Pattern - The shapes that recur, the forms that work, the architectures of experience

Presence - The quality of attention that allows patterns to be recognized rather than imposed

Practice - The daily return that deepens understanding through embodiment rather than analysis

These three interweave: presence allows pattern recognition, practice develops presence, patterns guide practice. None stands alone.

An Ongoing Recognition

This understanding of patterns continues to evolve. Each essay on this site, each moment of teaching, each walk through Barcelona reveals new facets. The patterns themselves teach, if we listen.

What patterns do you recognize in your own work? Where does the living diverge from the dead? How does attention itself become a practice of pattern recognition?

Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed. But patterns—living patterns—don’t destroy illusions so much as offer something more beautiful to grow toward. They work like dawn: not attacking the darkness but simply offering light.

Further Exploration

The patterns traced here will deepen and ramify in future writings. For now, they remain seeds—planted but not yet fully flowered.

Those interested in how these patterns manifest in specific domains must wait. Some things ripen best in shadow before they’re brought to light.

A comprehensive exploration of these patterns in pedagogical practice is forthcoming from Momento Mori Press.