A friend of ours let us have one of their old math books from school. Cameron sat down to work on it tonight, and this is one of the problems he chose to do:
Problem: The sum of two numbers is 787. One of the numbers is 521. Is the other number 266 or 265? How do you know?
Cameron's answer: 266 Math
What's more important? The capacity to learn or actual knowledge?
What's more important? Knowing how to ask questions, or knowing how to answer them?
Recently, a couple friends of mine decided to help me gain access to a very nice piece of equipment in a game that we play together online (Everquest, for those that are curious.) After I achieved the goal, and got the item, I realized that I had no idea really how it happened, where I got it from, or how to do it again on my own. I also felt little attachment or appreciation for the item. I was grateful that my friends were thinking of me, and wanted to give me something that was much more advanced than what I had before. But I didn't look at the new item and feel that sense of, "Damn, I *deserve* this thing for how much I worked for it." All the other pieces in my inventory were items that I had worked hard for (except for one thing that was a gift.) I wanted to feel the same way for my new piece of equipment, but I couldn't.
Then I thought that this is how I view many things in life. And I wondered if this is a natural human phenomenon. If I have a tour guide show me the way, it's interesting and fun, but it's not nearly as fullfilling or meaningful than if I explore a place on my own. If I figure out how to get something, make a plan and then follow through, it's means a whole lot more than if I am given the plan, then made to follow it (or just asked to follow without even knowing the plan.)
Is this how our kids feel when they are told what to learn and when? That the learning is less meaningful because it's not their own plan? They haven't made the goal, they haven't set out to do something, and they haven't determined that what they are doing has a meaning. When they are following someone else's idea of what to learn in the world, where's the room to take ownership of that knowledge?
When I gain knowledge or understanding through my own direction, I feel empowered and ready to move forward. When I work hard for something because I set my own goals, and I know why I'm doing the things I'm doing, the end result means the world to me and I want to show it to everyone. "I did this! Because it's who I am, what I like and what I do. This thing I did is something that nobody made me do. I did it because I wanted to. And look now, what I have."
When I realized this about myself, I realized that my kids, too, feel a deeper satisfaction with themselves and with what they have done when they are the ones who made the decision to do it in the first place. And it's why, for so many years, I have felt so little for the achievements I made in school. They weren't *my* achievements. They were my teacher's, my parents', everyone else's. The achievements that stick in my head are the things that I chose to do independent of what was required of me at school. Even simple things, as a kid, like cleaning my room when I wanted to, or writing a story that had nothing to do with school work.
In Everquest, I play because I enjoy the process of disovery. Many people have gone through the quests and the areas before me. There are many people who will help me get through the areas faster and gain lots of experience without trying. But that's not what's important to me. The journey is important to me. It doesn't matter that I'm "reinventing the wheel" by trying to figure out how the game works on my own. It's not a waste of time to me to start from scratch and try to get to the end without being told where to go and when. And when I need help, I like to know that there are friends out there who will help me. But ultimately, I want to do the majority of the work myself. Not just the work, but the planning for the work, and chosing which work to do in the first place. Out of the thousands of quests that are in the game, I only want to do the ones that work for me, not all of them. Even if there is an "awesome reward" at the end of them. It's the same for my kids. In life, they should do the quests that they want to do and go for the rewards that they want to have, so when they do get those rewards, they own them completely.
"Where's my journal mom?" asked my almost 8-year-old son, Cameron. "You know, the red one," he adds.
"You have a journal?" I ask.
"Ya, the notebook, with the red cover. That I write my stuff in," Cameron explains, while spinning around on his dad's desk chair.
Confused, I helped him find his journal without really knowing what I was looking for. In a few minutes, we found the five by three inch spiral bound notebook that he claimed was his journal. With it, he disappeared behind the couch.
A little while later, after I had forotten about his request, he appeared with his notebook and set it down on my keyboard. "This is my journal. Let me read it to you."
This is what he read to me, as written:
-i had nothing for breakfast went to Keirans house while the girls-. He stopped. "Oh I forgot to add "went to the gym with mom. Oops." He continued. -then i had lunch then i did my stuff- -We did our video games- -Kelsey came over we had dinner we went to the elementary school then i got hurt 2 times then we watch TV the end-
Each line had about 3 words and it filled one page.
"Wow, you did a lot of stuff today, Cam," I told him.
"Ya. And tomorrow I'll put in another page in my journal. See, I already have the date at the top." And he did. Wendsay, May17th.
I don't think I've ever read a better page of words. Perfect with its missing capitals and punctuation, beautifully written as only a seven-year old who doesn't have a grammar care in the world can. Even as an editor and writer and a lover of language, I would not correct his mistakes. His mistakes were irrelevant. His desire to write in his journal, his follow-through and the pride he displayed while reading it to me are not teachable. These aren't learned through correction or expectations. He has years to learn grammar. The punctuation will come later. Today, he pulled out his journal and wanted to write. I can barely catch my breath at the beauty of his strokes of graphite.
There's a Buddhist story of a woman running away from tigers.
She comes to the edge of a cliff and climbs down a vine. Above, she sees tigers. Below her, she sees tigers. And, a mouse comes up and starts nibbling on her vine. In front of her, she sees a small strawberry plant growing on an outcropping.
She looks at the tigers above her. She looks at the tigers below her. She looks at the mouse. Then, she reaches out and grabs a strawberry and enjoys it completely.
The tigers above are birth, the tigers below are death. And the mouse is all the crap that goes on in life. The strawberry is our joy. We never know when we'll find a strawberry. Even if things are falling apart around us (and they always are if we see it that way), it's important to be open to finding strawberries. It might just be the very last strawberry we get to experience.
Today, I had a day full of mice and strawberries, with tigers at both ends. And there it is.
We were hanging out at the park this morning, as we often do, when a mom arrived who looked exactly like Jennifer Aniston. We see celebrities a lot in Burbank, but I'm usually not very good at identifying them. Usually Yoshi is the one to point them out, and I still go, "Who?" But man, this woman looked so much like her, I had to call Yoshi and tell him.
He informed me that she doesn't have any kids. So it couldn't be her. Since she could easily pass for Jennifer, I wondered if she had to deal with that often in her life. What would it be like to ressemble a big celebrity while in Burbank where celebrities are all over the place? I wonder if she gets people asking for her autograph, or people wanting to take pictures of her.
Being a famous actor would be hard, but I think that so closely ressembling a famous actor would be even harder.
We went to a friend's birthday party today, and we got to talking about where we grew up, etc. It appears that my friend's husband went to the same schools as I did, K-12, one year ahead of me. Over the course of the afternoon we found out that:
We both have the same car, purchased within 3 days of one another,
We both owned the same kind of car before we bought the new one,
We both have 3 children, all roughly the same age, with the oldest a boy, and the two youngest girls,
We're both homeschooling,
My friend and I both teach Yoga,
My friend's husband went to the same schools as I did,
My friend's husband's father probably went to school with my dad, and he certainly knew who my grandfather was,
We have the same digital camera,
We both own Macs,
They had an ice-cream sundae party instead of cake (which is what we often do, and we don't know anyone else who does this),
And, we live about 3 blocks away from one another.
Weird. Just weird.
Since I teach a mind/body/yoga/pilates class twice a week, I periodically have Yoga nightmares. Sometimes I dream about people attending my classes, and refusing to do any of the poses that I teach.
Tonight, my dream came true. I subbed a pilates/yoga class for our fitness coordinator. There were about 20 people in the class. One of the men came in with a square mat, which looked much like a comforter from a bed, and laid it down on the floor. For the first five minutes of the class, he participated while I led the class through some warm-up stretches.
Then he laid down on his blanket/mat in corpse pose, and didn't move for the rest of the class.
At the end of the hour, he rolled up his mat, chatted with a bunch of other people, and then left.
I've always said to my students that the class is theirs, and it was up to them to make the class what they wanted it to be. I've even said, jokingly, that if they wanted to lay there and do nothing the whole hour, I wouldn't say anything. I never thought that anyone would do it.
...is really, really hard.
I thought the hard part would be writing a book. So far, that seems like the easy part compared to writing the query letter and proposal in order to just get my foot in the damn door.
Query letters and proposals are marketing tools. I have to put my head in a completely different place to write them. I'm slowly learning, but it's challenging for me. I suppose, what I'm going through right now is an example of the kind of learning I believe in - learning from necessity, goal achieving or interest. This is learning for a goal I *really* want to achieve.
I've been working with an online group, and there has been some very pointed criticism of my work. It's interesting however, that since the reason that I'm participating in this group is for a personal goal, and of my own choice, that this criticism has a completely different meaning than the criticism I heard in school. The slashes and comments on my college papers just plain hurt. And for no reason except that I didn't get an A, and I didn't please the teacher. I had no goals other than to fulfill the requirements of the class, and to avoid critism.
But this difficult process of writing a query letter and proposal is for a much bigger goal. I'm not trying to get a good grade, I'm trying to stand out. I'm not working against a deadline, but I feel compeled to finish this project, even when I tell myself I just can't do it. I can't help myself. I have to keep going. I have to do this.
Goal setting takes on a whole new meaning when I feel compelled to do something, rather than feeling like I have no choice.
Speaking of which, I have a huge goal of working on this month's issue of the California HomeSchooler. Have I started that? NO! I'm too busy being compelled to work on my query letter and proposal. Ok, ok, I'm getting off this tempting blog and working on my magazine.
