Process Equals Progress?

Somewhere along the line in my Early Childhood education I was told that process is much more important for young children than product. I don't think that amounts to the product never having any importance but, yes, I'm sure it is more important for young children to "be" in the flow of experience. I was surprised then, when my teenagers in First Day School wanted to make yards and yards of finger knitting and just roll it up into giant balls - not make anything from it despite my suggestions - just contain it in a large spherical stash and keep going. What did I take from this? Older children, of course, also need process without a focus on product. And maybe adults do, too.

As adults, when we craft something well, we are often in process for years, maybe for the course of our lifetime yet there is a difference between the work of a child simply experiencing a material, a technique, a tool. At some point we begin to work with a purpose, toward an end. First it might be a single project, then a series of projects to explore an idea. Over the long term, we might come to want to contribute to an entire body of work that is available in the world. I hope to share some crochet techniques with the entire crochet community. My book Contemplative Crochet is meant to share my connections of the spiritual to the work of our hands and through this blog I want to share my fascination with the development and use of our hands, especially as we create beautiful and useful products. It is all process!

How do we get there? How important are our earliest experiences with process? I suspect those early forays lay the groundwork for curiosity, creativity, and perseverance. Each kind of process leads to the next. So, even for adults, maybe the place to start any new project is just with basic materials, a playful attitude and an intention to enjoy the process.