Faith Venture

For some reason unknown to my consciousness, I was thinking about my neighbor teaching math to 8th graders (14-year-olds). Math should be taught as a way of thinking, not just memorize how to manipulate numbers, letters, and symbols (or even cymbals).

Then I thought about the challenges of teaching 14-year-old boys how to think. Or even 17-year-olds. I guess the brain doesn’t even get on par with testosterone until maybe 25. Some women tell me that 35 is a more likely age for male adulthood and ability to think.

How is your thinking going these days? Can you quiet yourself to think about a problem long enough to maybe even solve it?

My current book for thinking is from Nassim Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.

On our trip this past week, we stopped in at the Will Rogers Museum in Claremore, OK. He stated the principle almost 100 years before Taleb (without the math).

Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are ahead.

Will Rogers

Most of what I think about here is about just that. Physical and emotional life is fragile. Easily broken. A robust spiritual life is antifragile. It helps us weather storms. We could even say that whenever we lose, we’re ahead.

This entry was posted on July 28, 2021 at 8:06 am and is filed under Disciplines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.