We change jobs so quickly, we move through so much learning and meet so many people, and we encounter so many different ways of knowing, cultures, religions, languages, and physical landscapes. We are learning to use new tools all the time, and forgetting the old tools just as quickly.

We are in danger of losing touch with who we are and why we learn.

When we begin to measure the value of learning to use an online tool exclusively by how well it meets objectives, then we remove part of its intrinsic value. When what we do professionally determines the majority of the learning choices we make, and we select PD activities using utilitarian cost/benefit analysis, we reduce its intrinsic value.

When we fail to take the long personal journey ourselves that is required by the learners or clients we work with, and fail to commit to a perspective of lifelong learning for its long-term, intrinsic value, then we de-value the journeys others have taken, or about to embark upon. How we can take the journey using technologies and share this journey with others? Commit to the journey for its intrinsic value, because unlike the professional contexts we find ourselves in, lifelong learning and self-making as sustained activities are more profound, more involved, and more meaningful than the enclosed work bubbles of concern we might find ourselves in at any point in time.

As our society accelerates the learning we all have to engage in, and requires us to unlearn most of what we have learned, and change our minds increasingly more often, a compellingly disturbing question arises: What remains a constant? What transcends all these changes?