Every parent's deepest concern is simple: "Will my child be ok?" This universal anxiety often manifests as an endless search for the perfect skill or knowledge that will guarantee their child's future success.
Most treat this as a rhetorical question - a way of throwing up their hands and saying "Who can know what the future holds?"
But there is an answer.
It has a name: unfolding.
A Definition of Unfolding and Visioning
Unfolding, as the architect Christopher Alexander describes it, is the process of letting form emerge from the deep structure of what exists. It's about paying attention to context and allowing solutions to reveal themselves naturally:
Every whole must be allowed to unfold from the seed of its beginning, growing naturally out of the land and circumstances of its own existence.
Visioning, in contrast, imposes predetermined forms onto reality. It starts with an imagined end state and works backward, often ignoring or fighting against natural context and constraints.
This distinction is crucial in education:
- Visioning asks "what do you want to be when you grow up?"
- Unfolding asks "what naturally energizes and interests you right now?"
A learner skilled in visioning becomes “a doctor,” “a dancer,” “a lawyer.”
A learner skilled in unfolding becomes “the person they were meant to become.”
Unfolding as a Skill
Like any skill (such as musical ability or athletic coordination), everyone starts with different natural capacities for unfolding. They are also born with a natural range - a peak of the skill that they can achieve with practice.
Some children instinctively follow their interests, testing and exploring boundaries. Others aren’t as naturally skilled but can reach their latent potential with practice.
But regardless of starting point, unfolding can be practiced and improved:
- Regular exposure to open-ended problems builds comfort with uncertainty
- Reflecting on what works (and doesn't) develops pattern recognition
- Small experiments strengthen the ability to read contexts and adapt
- Practicing presence helps notice what naturally resonates
Without practice, this ability can atrophy even in natural unfolders. This is especially in environments that reward visioning instead.
Conventional Schooling's Suppression of Unfolding
Henrik Karlsson, a Swedish essayist, writes when explaining why he and his wife decided to move from Sweden, upending their life, in order to homeschool their daughter:
The school system is centered around visions, not unfolding. You are asked to make decisions about realities that are five, ten years down the line, and you get no feedback on your decisions. Even if you are clever enough to unfold in your spare time, that is of little use, because you can’t finetune and adjust your education anyway.
Conventional schooling not only emphasizes visioning but actively suppresses unfolding.
Most learners realize at some point that visioning is a dead-end.
Some realize it while they’re in school. These are the drop outs, some go on to successful lives, but overall their success rate is very low. These students realize that visioning is not the answer, but they don’t have enough experience or guidance to realize what could replace it.
Some realize after high school either through life circumstance (not enough money, an accident, “failing” at achieving on the visioning path) or luck (finding their resonance in high school).
Many realize after college when they’re dropped into “the real world” and the heuristics and skills that allowed them to succeed in school (doing well at visioning, aligning their behavior to the vision) suddenly don’t work. Most get angry at the system: “Why didn’t i learn this in school?” Life forces them to unlearn visioning in order to have any success. Some learn to unfold.
Some never realize and continue in conventional schooling their entire lives, living in the visioning world or stick to “the right life path” expecting happiness to be right around the corner, but it never comes. Some have midlife crises, some stay on the visioning path until the very end.
Learning to Unfold
The key elements of unfolding are deceptively simple but take practice to master:
Cultivate Awareness of Natural Energy
- Notice when time flies vs. drags during activities
- Track what you naturally gravitate toward when free
- Observe what leaves you energized vs. drained
Design and Run Small Experiments
- Try variations of engaging activities
- Sample different learning environments
- Make low-stakes tests before bigger commitments
Build Strong Feedback Loops
- Document what works and doesn't
- Reflect on emerging patterns
- Seek input from trusted observers
Stay Open to Emergence
- Hold goals loosely
- Welcome unexpected opportunities
- Let plans evolve with new information
- Trust the process of discovery
The Path Forward
Unfolding is a skill that anyone can develop, not just kids. But as with any skill, the earlier you start, the better.
The future belongs to those who master the art of unfolding - who can navigate uncertainty with confidence, discover deep resonance in their work, and adapt fluidly as contexts evolve.
The imperative is clear: education must transform from teaching rigid visioning to nurturing the natural process of unfolding.