The Answers Are in the Back of the Book!
Do you remember that first day in algebra class when they passed out the textbooks and you discovered the answers were in the back of the book?
I do! I thought I had gotten the teacher’s book by mistake, but then I looked around and saw that everyone else had the answers too!
I figured, “This will be a breeze.” But as the teacher began to talk, I realized that just having the answers wasn’t going to be enough. The point of the class was to figure out how to use the process to get to the answer. And then, of course, I noticed that they were the answers to just the odd numbered problems.
Life works the same way. We already know the answers, the trick is to apply what we know. We really do know that the answers to living a happy life are to
- do unto others what we’d want them to do unto us
- love our neighbors/enemies as ourselves
- notice and be grateful for all that we have
or, as Robert Fulghum wrote in his book “All I Ever Really Needed I Learned in Kingergarten”
- learn some and think some
- and draw and paint and sing and dance
- and play and work every day some.
So what did we do in the algebra class? The teacher wanted us to “show our work” in order to see that we understood the principle behind the process and the process behind the answer!
And in life, too, how will you “show your work?” What 3 things can you do to show how you got “the answer?” Jot a note below.