Perhaps this is why, even when things get difficult, I'm able to keep a generally cheerful, positive attitude:
“It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer .”~ Albert Einstein
Some say that I've stayed with Todd too long. Perhaps. However, I do feel that in spite of the discomfort, I have gleaned a lot of wisdom (and empathy) that I wouldn't otherwise have. So, that's good.
The Einstein quote made me smile. "I stay with problems longer." It had never occurred to me that I'd gain marital counsel from Albert Einstein.
When we look at academics, it is abundantly true that there is great value to staying with those problems--to keeping plugging away until we understand.
The persistence that leads to a student truly grasping a concept is not the same as being apathetically content with the status quo. It is a resolve that "I will not flee this problem--I will not give up--until I understand the very root of it, so that I can apply the principles to other problems in the future."
That doesn't mean that I will spend the rest of my life reducing fractions or diagramming sentence structure.
Life requires a "play" button, a "pause" button and a "stop" button. All are necessary and good, but not all are appropriate or helpful in every and all situations. Sometimes we think we hit the "pause" button or better yet, @ what point does the "pause" button become the "stop" button and vice verse. I am working on a viable "pause button" that isn't a "stop" button in disguise!
ReplyDeleteI LOVE that concept! Yes, I think we need a "pause" button. And I can see how for some it becomes a "stop" button. This made me think of when we recently got a new DVD player. The old one would default to "stop" if you left something paused too long, so I didn't even think of the possibility of it starting to play when I paused a show at a spot that was beyond PG and left the room to talk to someone at the front door. When I returned, the show had started playing again on its own, and I realized that the kids could have walked in on some content I wouldn't have approved for their age because I wasn't there monitoring it. Therefore I think I prefer the type of pause button that will become a stop button if ignored, instead of automatically playing... However, there are times when we could get distracted and forget to finish something. Maybe what is needed with a "pause" button in life is some sort of alarm to alert us if we have been snoozing. For that, perhaps friends checking in on friends is the best sort of safety feature.
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