RSSLife if like a box of cho - no, I’m just kidding. Actually, I think life is a lot like a Geometry problem. Perhaps that’s why, for the first time in my life, in 10th grade, I was one of the top two math kids in my grade. - But my Algebra I teacher would have been absolutely stunned (as was I!) to see me in that position.
In Geometry, you have some information that is already given to you, with which you need to solve your equation. It’s always enough to do the job, though at first it may not appear to be so. Like life, you say? I agree!
And as in Geometry, some equations have you solve for angle AB, in another equation, while the degree of angle AB is one of the pieces of information you are already given, in order to solve a different problem. So we’re all like that. One person’s given is another person’s problem!
For some, patience may be a given - they’re almost born with it. Patience, for me -well, that was definitely something I was solving for; and it has been hard-won.
It’s easy to judge others for what is so easy for us. “What is her problem??” we’ve all thought. Maybe we should take that question literally, as her problem is obviously something different than yours is.
When we judge others, we’re assuming they began with the same set of givens! My friends in college liked to call me “bass-ackwards”, pig-latin for the fact that I generally tended to be going in a direction that no one else was going in. (I had started in a place that none of my friends had gone to yet. I began life with the givens of knowing that materialism alone would never make me happy, and have always known that I was not my body. I was uncomfortable with materialism, mistakenly assuming that if I took it on, I’d be lost in it, like everyone else I saw!)
These kinds of opposite directions - you and I learning what the other already knows - makes it easy to misunderstand and judge each other. Those born with perfect health, for example, often have a hard time understanding the reality of someone born with serious health complications. Those born with wealth often have a hard time understanding what it’s like for someone who begins life with a negative family bank balance.
Just remember: the person you want to teach probably also has something to teach you. (Right back at ya!) Look for it!
I fully understand the Algebra vs Geometry thing, They transferred me into Algebra in the 8th grade, an experimental program thing, I was so lost. I got the answers right but I couldn’t tell the teacher how i got them. When he demanded i show all my work well things The next year they sent me to Geometry and what a difference I could easily understand it, because as I figured out later I had things I could see and deal with, made me realize that I’m more of a visual learner type. You might have to tell me a few times how to do something but just show me once and I’ve got it.
Like you said everyone learns their own way. And sadly that causes problems for those of us not included in the group majority. Fear also has a lot to do with that, People have a natural fear of the unknown, and that carries over into what is different, or just unfamiliar, for many it’s just plain scary. What they don’t realize is that the same things apply to them from the other persons view point.
Like the opposites you mentioned, the rich think the poor are just lazy, lack ambition etc. so their situation is only their own fault. But if you took away the rich ones money and credit cards and lines and their peer contacts, and all the rest of what they take for granted, if you dropped them into the bottom ranks with nothing extra like everyone else, few would probably know how to survive more than a day or two.
The old saying about walking a mile in another persons moccasins comes to mind. That until you do you can never truly understand them, or their situation.
I’ve learned over the years that everyone knows something I don’t. And that those with less are more willing to share what little they do have than those with a lot.
Comment by FarmerJon — April 29, 2009 @ 3:20 pm
You’re reminding me of the premise for the film “Trading Places” - a classic!
Comment by Shanti Mai — April 29, 2009 @ 3:25 pm