Three Answers to “What is A Life’s Work”

University International Cooperation, Costa Rica,

Acceptance Speech for Doctorate honoris causa.

Dear Graduates, Faculty, and other guests,

I had four degrees before today, having attended three universities. And I taught at universities as a lecturer, assistant faculty or guest speaker in over 27 universities in dozens of countries around the world. So, I ask myself what I thought was important on the occasion of completing academic work and transition to using some new knowledge in the world. Graduating to what?

From Knowledge to Understanding:

First, in order to make a great contribution, I was to change from being informed and credentialed, to appreciating the core purpose of Regenerative Education. Which is to engaging others to seek understand the working of life before we act. My study was not to accumulate knowledge and share knowledge. Regeneration is about living systems and how they work as a system, alive and dynamic, and evolve the system’s capacity to carry out each role for the system as a whole to actualize. I must move from working with knowledge and producing actions with it to examine it in a system working in life and living. My new knowledge will be quickly outdated and has barely been vetted yet by me. Mostly just transferred.

If it is to be examined, and the received knowledge tested, I am at a beginning. I have to learn to image each role at work with other roles and what the core process of the system is, for the…