How To Get To The Moon Yebit Door #1, or Door #2 Faith Once Around the Mountain Math Autobiography
Having a one room high school had it’s advantages. Each student worked
at his own pace; plus there were combined ages in the classroom, and at
times I would assign an older student to mentor a younger one. At the
beginning of the year, it would be my practice to ask an older student to
spend a little time with a new student, telling him how I wanted the
classroom conducted, and how things ran. One of these raw recruits came
back from the session with a senior, and after the senior left, I asked the
younger one to have a seat. "Yes ma’am!" he said, sitting straight and tall.
Wow, I thought. The senior had done a really good job. So I inquired if
the student still had any questions. He thought for a few seconds and said
"No ma’am". I know the ‘3 Rules’." This puzzled me a bit. It wasn’t until
later that I learned that the senior didn’t really want to fool
with all the rules and regulations, so he sort of condensed things for me;
giving the student the information he felt was most valuable to get on my
good side. I asked the freshman to go over the ‘3 Rules’ for me so that
I could see that he understood them, as I didn’t have a CLUE as to what he
was talking about.
He explained it this way: "Well, rule #1 is never to call you "Deb".
Your name is Mrs. Walker and you get really mad if students call you
anything else."
(Well, that part was true enough. I would have phrased it as
learning how to show respect’, or ‘being sensitive to the wishes of
others’……but that would do for now).
"The second rule is to never say "can’t" in your classroom ‘cause
you will decide that whatever it is that we think we can’t do, is something
that we need practice at,and you’ll assign lots of projects so we can do it"!
(Gee, I never looked at it that way, but…. if building confidence in
yourself was going to be translated as "never say can’t" I guess there were
worse things I would be accused of…..)
"And rule #3 is never say "Yebit"!
(Now this one stumped me. There were several five letter words I could
think of never to say, but "yebit" wasn’t one of them. And since, again,
I didn’t have a clue, I finally took a breath and said, "OK. Just this once,
I would like you to use ‘yebit’ in a sentence, so that I can see that you
clearly understand what not to say."
"Yes ma’am", came the reply. He thought for a moment and
then said, "If you tell me to do a five page report on elephants, I’m
never supposed to say ‘Yeah, but I don’t know anything about them’
or ‘Yeah, but I don’t want to, or even worse,’ ‘Yeah, but I don’t know how’.
The senior said you’ll make us learn how to do things for ourselves,
and I’d be reading about elephants until Easter!"
.............................Ah, the wisdom of youth.
I would tell my students that they always had the opportunity
in my class of choosing either one of those doors, at any time.
Door #1 was labeled "Worry World". It involves realizing that
something happens in your life, that you may or may not want,
and choosing to worry about it, think the worst, and carry those
worries to the very worst extreme. It involves more than just
recognizing a problem and doing what you can to solve it,- it
involves worry…..actively pursuing ‘what if’s’ to the point
where it robs you of peace.
Door #2 was labeled "Opportunity Knocks". Now, this door has
to have three components. Something happens in your life that is
1) unexpected 2) unwanted and 3) will lead to a change in my
currant plans….…
Then we would take a situation and hypothesize…..
…You get a flat tire, and you choose Dooooooor #1!:
…You’ll be late for work, now; your boss will be mad; you may
even lose your job!
…What’s a new tire going to cost anyway? Then there’s the
towing? And the labor charges..
…If you have to work later, you won’t be able to get to the mall
to get that cool outfit that went on sale yesterday; which means it
will be gone by the time you get there; so you’ll have nothing to
wear to the party; so you might as well not even go……
So here we’ve learned that a flat tire means……. no party.
Sound pretty unreasonable?
So, what if instead, you chose Door #2?
…Whoa! This is something unexpected, unwanted, and will lead
to a change in my current plans. Wait! Those are the three secret
ingredients to the Door #2 (opportunity knocks) So what now?
Oh yeah. Now, I’m supposed to decide that this is really a disguised
opportunity for neat things to happen. Course, I might not be able
to figure it out right away, but I’m supposed to be on the lookout
of all kinds of possibilities.
Let’s see, what life lesson am I currently working on? Oh yeah,
I decided in class devotions that I wanted to be more patient; and
my other prayer was finding a better job, and finding someone cool
to hang around with, that wants to do the same things I do. Fooey!
Looks like the patient part is pretty obvious, I’ve got to be patient
with this whole flat tire thing. But what if this turns out to be the
first step to that new job? Maybe not, but what if I go get the new
tire and the manager of the auto shop sees me and hires me on the
spot…..and what if his son is there, and we hit it off…….or even
better, what if his daughter is there……
Now, how much faster do you think, you’ll change that tire,
whistling all the way, with a smile on your lips, and even better,
a smile in your heart?………..
Ok-- both ideas may not happen……..ever. But if you’re going
to think of things that might happen, think of good things, positive
things, things you want to happen to make the changes that get
thrown in your way,……… good experiences. And then think
about how they might just end up fitting in with what you’ve
just been praying for!
Our job is to constantly be looking for the good things that will
come about because we took hold of this situation and gave it your
best shot. Don’t just change the tire, change it with enthusiasm.
Don’t just drag into the shop; go with a smile on your face. You
certainly would not have actively chosen this for yourself, so why
is it happening? And you may never know. But believing that
choosing Door # 2 as a door of opportunity, instead of Door #1,
a yebit door…(you know, Could this be a good thing? Yeah, but
look at what it’s going cost me……)
-you have already chosen to search out the good stuff
-and because that will be reflected in your attitude,
-you will be affecting others with that attitude.
- and because their attitude is affected…….ya just never know…
The idea is, that because you have actively chosen to not be afraid
of change, and chosen to look for the good things that will come
your way, you will have a better chance of finding those good things
that are out there. Finders keepers was a game everybody hated as a
kid, and now we find that it’s OK. Who knew?
So, it’s pretty much agreed, that we don’t like change, or to do
things that we hadn’t planned on, or are an unexpected interruption
into our lives. We don’t like it and yet-----it’s coming anyway.
Step 1 is to recognize the three secret ingredients: those things in
our live that are unexpected, unwanted and will lead to a change
in our current plans.
Step 2 is to acknowledge that we have to deal with it; recognize
it for what it really is: a disguised opportunity for neat things to happen.
Step 3 is to think positive and be on the lookout for the possibility
of good things that will come, just because you actively decided to
do your very best.
Step 4 is to review just what is important to you……what you’ve
been praying about that you wanted to change and how interesting
it would be if this was the very thing that could lead to that change.
Step 5 is to have faith, that this may become the best and most
important decision in your life, and to go about your business now,
just waiting to see where the new path takes us, and just because
you can’t see something positive happening right away, doesn’t
mean it isn’t working it’s way around to it.
The change is a door of opportunity. ‘Yeah, but I don’t want it’;
‘Yeah, but I don’t like it’; and ‘Yeah, but maybe if I drag my feet,
or ignore it, it will go away or someone else will take care of it’
won’t return the same results.
It may indeed go away; and you may have just missed out
in the most important opportunity of a lifetime.
Robert Frost once wrote a poem entitled The Road Not Taken,
which has remained by all time favorite…………….
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
--Robert Frost (1874-1963) in "The Mountain Interval"
It’s easy to sacrifice if you know the outcome. It’s harder if we
actively decide that it’s not so much a sacrifice, but a new path,
a new road, a new opening in our own lives. Giving up the past,
or giving up a particular way of doing things doesn’t have to be
a bad thing. And knowing that God will take the faith that you h
have in Him, for turning things around to the good, leads us directly
to that door of opportunity, leaving the ‘yebits’ behind for good.
by D.K.Walker
"If it were not for the rocks in it’s bed…
the stream would have no song."
One of the things my students loved doing was giving impromptu speeches. My job was to prepare them for interviews, or speaking in public in general, so that they would not be so afraid of the speaking process, that it closed doors for them in the future. So I would start off each year by asking a student that was basically an extroverted know-it-all, someone who wouldn’t be afraid to show off in front of the class—I’d ask him to talk for 30 seconds on a silly topic that I chose. Eventually, by the end of the year, we were talking about history, politics, and civil rights, etc., but to begin with, the topics would be "How I eat big, black bugs……or Why I never carry a parachute".
He is hesitant, because he’s afraid of what every student is afraid of, and that is being made fun of, and usually says that he can’t do it. We all give him some words of encouragement and so he starts spouting off for 30 seconds about why spiders should have two heads, and, when he gets through that I challenge him to 60 seconds. Then I challenge him to 3 minutes the next day, and inform him that he will be graded: ….a C to just get through the 3 minutes…..a B to have good eye contact, and correct posture….and an A if he can get through without hesitating, or cracking up.
So the next day he starts, and several students that I have talked to before class, start making faces. Well, this distracts him, and I explain that I can’t even give him a C because he didn’t finish the 3 minutes. He tells me that this wasn’t fair, and I tell him that life isn’t fair and that it’s always throwing things at us we don’t expect, but that I would give him another chance tomorrow.
So the next day, he’s expecting the faces, and nobody makes any; but half-way through, I start making the most outrageous faces that I can come up with; and he cracks up. Again, I explain my predicament in giving him a passing grade because he didn’t get through his speech. Again, he tells me that it isn’t fair, and again, I remind him that life isn’t fair, and that we have to look at it as a challenge, not a problem, and I ask him if he is up to the challenge. Well, of course he is.
So the third day, he is confident and excited and goes through 21/2 minutes non-stop on a really ridiculous topic that he has suggested. He’s expecting the topic, the faces, and the time limit. However, at the end, we all throw giant spitballs made of notebook paper at him. He dodges, and keeps right on speaking until the end. His time is up, and I ask him what grade he thinks he deserves. The student is usually very frank and will say that he earned an A, and could he do it again, because now he know knows that he can do it, but wants to prove to ME that he can do it even better. I ask him what has changed, because a few days ago, he was convinced that he couldn’t speak in front of a crowd and now he can not only do it, but wants to do more?
We get around to the fact that he now has faith in himself. I explain that I always knew he could do it……but my job as teacher is to allow him the opportunity to show himself that he can do these things.
Which reminds me of how God must look at each of us…….. When he sees us, he sees the potential, the love, the ability, the unbounded directions that we can go for him; and the unlimited potential that through him, we can indeed do all things.
It must make him so sad to see us put limits on ourselves all the time; stopping the dream dead in our tracks by doubting that we can do things, thinking that we’re not able, or smart enough, or worthy, or talented, or liked, or whatever.
I shared with you once that I had dream a long time ago that I ended up in heaven with the Lord looking at me with great anticipation. One of his angels, a really good-looking one as I recall ( I was a bit younger then). Anyway……He gives me this violin, and asks me to play, and I explain that I never tried the violin. The Lord is shocked and explains that He had given me a talent beyond the talents of anyone alive to play this violin so beautifully, that He was so looking forward to hearing the efforts of all my years of practice. If I had only picked ite up once, I would have felt the tremendous force of His energy and……
Then His eyes just looked so disappointed.
I never forgot that look.
If I had just tried……just once.
Having faith that God is behind you in your efforts takes time and patience. When I was a young girl, being raised Catholic, I felt I should enter the convent. It was the "in" place to be if you wanted to be spiritual. Two years there, and I realized that this wasn’t exactly my forte. So the mother superior and I agreed, that I would look for God’s calling somewhere else, and she wouldn’t tell my parents that I had been caught climbing the town watertower at 3am. Seemed reasonable……..
My faith grew as I relied on the Lord later to help me teach my children; and to help me teach my classes. You never know what they really listen to, but you have faith that you do your best and let God handle the rest. On graduation day I would give my typical go-get-um address, and then to each graduate I gave a mylar balloon right there in the auditorium, and read them my poem, which explained what to do with the little pieces of paper they were to tie to the string before letting it go into the night.
MAKE IT SO
So faith is about belief in the abilities given to you , belief in yourself, and about the willingness to take risk. And there’s one other thing. And that’s the belief in the opportunity for growth.
In going through surgery for breast cancer and a few years later, my own father’s death, I’ve had two tremendous opportunities to learn about this "letting go" business; viewing each new day as a day to learn a new life lesson and focusing on the positive. Life is not one challenge after another to "get through". Life is to be enjoyed and experienced each moment while going through the good and the bad. Each one has the potential for tremendous teaching to pass on, if we make ourselves aware of the experience. Changing our attitude to embrace the bad experience, and take the challenge to learn through it, allows us to experience it better, more enriching, and more joyfully.
When my Dad died, I had worked several years in a nursing home dealing with death and survivors; I had worked with hospice, and felt I knew what to expect. Here’s a man that was a chemical engineer, with an IQ off the chart, producing patents right and left…….if you use All detergent, you are using something that he helped to invent. He developed the spray-dry process to make liquid detergents into power. Anyway, here’s a man that was truly great in my eyes, and when he died, I think I expected some sort of ripple in time. When I didn’t get what I expected, my faith was shaken..
And of course that was the whole point. We are changed by the thoughts, and actions of other people and events. And, by the same token, we can change lives by the simplest action on our part. Faith is about believing in that change.
We tend to think of ourselves going through one crisis after another in life; but crises can come in little, private ways as well. It doesn’t have to be a huge crisis, it can be loneliness; it can be aging; it can be finding that we are having trouble making decisions, or just an empty feeling in trying to once again find our place in the universe after a change takes place.
I think the reason I like water, the ocean, the lake, the river so much is because of the ripples. I can watch the ripples float and touch places that I’ve never been. And it reminds me also that God touches me in ways that I never imagined possible. Our faith in Him allows Him to show us how to actually appreciate the opportunities for growth that come our way; to send our balloon soaring; to allow ourselves to take risks and to embrace changes that make us hesitate at first; and to use this attitude to touch others by the littlest of actions. You never know just how far-reaching your good deed will go.
My father was a chemical engineer who loved to invent things, even when there didn’t appear to be any reason for inventing it.
He put little round wheels on tennis shoes and ran, ....well rolled, around his offices before the idea of roller skates ever hit the market. No one would believe that it would ever catch on.
Oh, he did some important inventing, too. For Monsanto Chemical Company. He worked on irradiating plants for genetic research, helped out at some sort of meltdown at Los Alamos that was top secret; he developed patents for producing powdered detergent instead of the liquid stuff, and developed the product that you use as All detergent! All in all, he earned seven patents, none of which I have a plaque or record for because he was a humble man, and pitched anything that could remotely be put on a wall.
I suspect it was because that he felt that after a job was done, we need to move on to the next one, and become involved its challenges;
When he retired, he was always puttering around putting goofy things together to make new things. He talked out loud about a better shuffleboard stick; one that wouldn’t strain your back.
And it wasn’t until after his death, and reading his journal entries, that I really took notice of a very important part of his life; it wasn’t so much getting there, it was enjoying the ride.
Now, don’t get me wrong; he was definitely a type A personality, stressed out for the majority of his life, and extremely impatient with anyone or anything. But, if there was a mountain in his way, and most people would have climbed over, or tunneled through, he would always try the impossible, or some other different way, just to see where it took him. It may certainly not have taken him around the mountain where he was supposed to end up, but the fun was finding out just where it DID take him, and what exactly that would lead to after that. The ten different products he invented on the way, were just as exciting as the one he was commissioned to do.
The intriguing part for him was the journey itself. And when he got to where he was going, he immediately chose a new journey.
I have some creations of his--carved balsa wood fishes, but that’s all I have. He gave away his model planes, his paintings, other things he made, because once he made them, they were no longer important.
Upon his death, I found the beginnings of a clay model of a dolphin he was working on. I kept it for months; and then started shaping it myself. Modeling is harder than it looks. I could never get the thing to turn out to look anything like a dolphin. I finally threw it away. Again, it wasn’t until years later that I realized that a dolphin is never what it would have become in my dad’s hands anyway. If it didn’t work out that way, he would have gone with something else. I didn’t have fun with it, because I had envisioned the perfect outcome instead of going with the flow, and finding out what else it could have become in my hands.
I think that so often we don’t start things for just that reason. Lots of excuses for why we’ll never reach that perfect goal. Not enough time, not enough skill, not enough knowledge--too hard, too easy, too much effort, too early, too late, too whatever.
And starting a project or working toward a goal with a different attitude can make all the difference. If we don’t finish it, what will we have learned along the way? If it doesn’t take us to where we expected it to go, where will we be? And where can we go from there? It has always been held up in society to finish what we start, to reach the goal, to accomplish exactly what we started out to do, and of course this is wonderful. But how many of us never even started certain things thinking that we’d never have what it takes to finish.
So, plan on having a good time traveling around the mountain to wherever that road leads.
Deb Walker
My Dad was probably instrumental in giving me my attitude in math. He was a research chemist for Monsanto, who had no time for the traditional math learning. He was an inventor, who developed the product we now call "All" detergent, and also the spray-dry process it takes to make the liquid detergent into powder. In all, he gave Monsanto the rights to 7-13 patents. I don’t know the exact count, as he never kept the paperwork or plaques. Just cluttered up his office………
He was always excited about finding new ways to do a traditional problem. And if I recall correctly, if he couldn’t find a problem, he’d create one by just wondering, "Yeah, but what if?"
I remember both anticipating, and avoiding his help. If I knew how to do something my way, he’d only come up with alternatives, or suggest a way of displaying something that was non-traditional. "Non-traditional" in my teen years was next to death. However, if I was ever stumped at how to redesign a science project, or try a new way to come up with an answer, he was right there in the challenge with me, enjoying the ride.
In class, I can’t help but explore new ways to come up with the same answer, which often takes us off track, but the students enjoy the learning process, which is where my heart is. All students get stuck in something…..math, pronouns, capitol of Denmark…..The unique part of my job is finding the "learning strategy" that best helps them help themselves, and feel good about themselves. From the third graders, to high school, to adult learners to the inmates I now teach at the local prison—each of us has some sort of algebra word problem hanging over our head. The fun comes in de-coding it, and moving on.
And now that my dad has passed away, I suppose that is his legacy. It’s not so much getting there, although that can be a great challenge in itself. The real challenge sometimes comes in enjoying the ride, and learning to both appreciate and learn from the experiences that life throws us.
I was never much good at catching balls. …….although I have managed to come up with this really neat glove...
Deb Walker
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