Poignant Lessons of Life

 I often reflect on lessons I've learned. Sometimes a specific lecture or lesson from a professor or elementary teacher stands out. And that lesson sucks with me throughout my life. Here are a few that have stuck.

My eleventh grade history/literature teacher had us read Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" together. After each lesson, he would talk about it. One day he got on his proverbial soap box and talked about how we as humans try to put everything in a box, make everything in straight lines. We defy nature, and therefore God. As I've been learning more and more about gardening, ecology, and permaculture, I see this over and over. We think we know so much, but in reality we know very little. The more we attempt to take nature and claim grind, the more havoc we wreak. Bees don't fly in straight lines from flower to flower. We think that making things as efficient and compact and industrialized as possible saves money, but it only creates other, more costly problems. Monocrop planting is like a huge billboard for pests and diseases. So we think the solution is chemicals, which only briefly work and are harmful to us and the environment. When nature already has a solution: diversity and attracting beneficial hugs. We fight against nature instead of working with it, as it is. We fight nature and therefore God. #rantover I promise, lol.

My fourth grade teacher was new to teaching. So new that my third-grade teacher was also her third-grade teacher. But she taught me a lot. Two, scratch that, THREE lessons stand out from her.

1. She cultivated a love of science in all of her students, especially in me. One day she had a bunch of test tubes standing next to each other and poured water into each of them and then some other water also. The result was a rainbow of test tubes. Our task was to figure out how she did it. "There was powder in the tubes" was one guess. Another was that she put dye in each of them without us seeing. Neither suggestion was correct. I silently thought about it, and in my contemplation probably missed the explanation that she gave. For years I puzzled over that object lesson and could never figure it out. Recently, my sister-in-law was teaching at the same school as her, right as my teacher was about to retire. So I asked how she had done it. Surprised that I remembered it, she revealed that the multiple containers of water were not actually water but various chemicals. My assumptions were at fault. When the transparent liquids were combined, a chemical reaction produced the various colors, based on which chemicals were combined.
2. Once she wrote on my quarterly report card that I often pout and give up when confronted with difficult problems that I can't easily solve. I remember being angry and furious at her for writing that, cause I was a perfect student. Or so I felt.  In the years since, the image of that sentence printed at the bottom of the dot-matrix paper has stuck with me. Especially when I am working on a difficult problem and throw a tantrum.  I then calm down and realize that I can do hard things.  It may take a long while and a significant amount of elbow grease, but I can do it
3. She started the Young Astronaut's program in our school. One day per week we met either in the gym or her classroom and did science stuff. We planted beans in milk cartons, learned about photovoltaic cells, contraction of eye pupils to regulate light, and many other fascinating things about the world around us. We even tried dehydrated space food - my favorite was the ice cream.
4. Okay, I lied, FOUR. Once she kept me late because I refused to write. That day we had learned about the haiku. I could not think of anything to come up with for my haiku. So I just sat there. Just three lines and seventeen syllables. But I couldn't do it. And I continued to sit trying to come up with something, but even after school I still stubbornly refused to write anything until I had something perfect. This incident, the one time that I ever faced any level of detention is probably what inspired her to write her criticism on that report card. I hated writing for many years, especially creative writing. I was okay with writing a report, but not a story or expression of my thoughts and feelings on a subject. Sometime in high school, I started a journal which I dutifully wrote in every day until sometime in college after my mission when the addiction took over my life. That's another story entirely. Long story short, I used writing to help get out of that addiction and to stay sober even now. Thankfully, writing and I are on much better terms. It has become a healthy outlet for my emotions and a way of sorting out things.

As a sophomore in college, I really struggled with the abstract side of math. Computational math was a breeze, with or without a calculator. I remember sitting with a fellow student in our professor's office. This was the second time I had him, first for Math 4710, Probability, the previous semester, and now for Math 4210, Fundamentals of Analysis. He basically told us to try and to keep working at it.  He compared proofs and problems with using a hammer. At first, the muscles are weak, and the body not very-well coordinated. With practice, the muscles strengthen and better swing the hammer. The brain and body become more accurate and hit the nail, not the poor thumb. With time, diligence, and persistence the proof muscles did get stronger. I learned the tools and techniques to solve theorems and other problems.

In group therapy, our therapist compared addiction to being stuck at the bottom of a well. Even if someone tossed us a shovel, how would we get out. I've imagined this many times and tried picturing how I could get out. He didn't give us the solution. And it continues to puzzle me. Maybe it relates to the infamous first and second steps of recovery. That we are powerless and need help from a higher being. For God could surely pluck us out of that well just add he did me from the addiction. I think the imagery combined with the problem had helped solidify this lesson in my thoughts. And the same for all of these lessons. I remember them well either because they were an object lesson or I imagined them intensely with great detail. I bet there's a study out there about the permanence of memories and lessons.