Me, as a Learner

                I remember sitting in the station wagon in the garage returning home from somewhere. I was in middle school, and my high school sister’s Algebra book was in my lap, open. She was in the front seat. I was reading it.

                “What are you doing?” she asked.

                “What is this?” I asked, “Is this math?”

                “Yeah,” Jami replied, “in high school it gets harder. You start using letters in with the numbers.”

                She didn’t say it like it was scary or anything. She was nonchalant, matter-of-fact. I walked into the house in a daze. What was it about letters that I didn’t know? Why was this being hidden from me?

                I remember this as the first time I grappled with an idea. There was a physical feeling in my head as I stretched and strained my brain to try and find the meaning of this cryptic message – “You start using letters in with the numbers.”

                I heard a blind man on the radio describe the feeling of being lost, alone in a hotel room. He described “groping” the walls try to understand and conceptualize the layout of the room. Though I’m not blind, I related to that in the way that I felt as I wrestled with big ideas. I groped and fondled and grasped but lacked the ability to conceptualize the entire picture.

                I’ve always loved this feeling. I read books and authors about subjects I have no expertise in; I ponder philosophical mysteries I haven’t done the coursework for. Not because I can understand the answer but for the lovely feeling in my head that comes from knowing that there’s something too big for me to grasp.

                I think that what I’m fascinated by is the feeling of possibility when I ponder a topic I can’t grasp. When I read Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe about the nature of string theory, I walked away with a flawed and rudimentary idea of string theory. I couldn’t teach a class in it. I don’t understand the equations involved. Yet I find myself searching for that feeling all the time. I want to hear and read people who know more about a topic than I’d ever considered. It proves to me how much is out there, how little I know. It also reinforces to me the vastness of the human capacity to understand.

                I have a former player and student who went on to Lindenwood University on a bowling scholarship. When Brad was a junior in high school, I pulled him aside for “the talk”. If he was interested in going to college to play soccer, I needed to know where he wanted to go so I could start the recruiting process. That’s when he broke the news that he wasn’t going to play soccer. He wanted to focus on bowling. From there on out, I quizzed him every day about bowling. Why is it scored so weird? Why are there so many different balls? I learned about oil patterns and lane strategies.

                I got the same feeling in my brain listening to Brad conduct a master class on bowling that I got from reading about string theory.