Giussani, Freedom and Unschooling

In reading the latest section of Is It Possible to Live This Way? I was struck by a few passages that come very close to describing, in my mind, the aim and motivation we have as Catholic unschoolers. (And by "we," I mean, our family, not every unschooling or every Catholic unschooling family.)

Giussani is discussing freedom -- what it is, and how it relates to our experience of satisfaction. Earlier, he speaks of freedom as it relates to "perfection" in the sense of the telos, the end for which we are made. He says that when our desire (which, according to our creation, is for infinity) is satisfied, this is freedom. Then he describes someone who supposes a trip to the Caribbean will bring lasting satisfaction, but discovers it doesn't.

If this satisfaction, this perfection, isn't total, if it isn't totalizing, if it has some hole that water leaks out from, if it has a crack of some sort, if something is left open, there's no freedom. It's sadness, the hole is the sadness. As Dante said: "Everyone vaguely pictures in his mind/ A good the heart may rest on, and is driven/ By his desire to seek it and to find." That's how the heart of man is made. "

Now, I suppose this could describe several endeavors. But to me it strikes at the heart of why we unschool, at least from a philosophical perspective. We experience life as it occurs, as it appeals, as it attracts. We honor what attracts the child (and the parent!). There really is no other teacher but the attraction. And the reality spoken of above. There are parents, to be sure. I want to exist to my children not as policeman or judge but, by the grace of God, as model, as a musician who plays a tune that inspires something -- either a harmony, or a painting, a dance, or a good critical music review. I want my children to discover who they are, who God has made them, and then to run in it. I don't want to impose twelve years worth of cultural and peer baggage (any thicker than what is inevitable living among a family of sinners) that will make the running a plodding, or a tripping.

I think what I have loved about Fr. Giussani, but have had a hard time finding the words for, is this concept put forth in the quote above. The heart is an engine, and we know when something is "totalizing" for the heart and when the heart experiences sadness. We are made not only for learning (a basic tenet of unschooling) but we are made to seek infinity, and to discern that which "totalizes" us. (What a weird, true, Giussani word!) It is such an amazing, challenging, sometimes frightening gift to walk this way as Catholic unschoolers!