Unknown Artist:
Ivory and Brass Folding Shoe Measure (1738)

" … I feel deeply sorry for that absence."

I recently happened upon a Neil DeGrasse Tyson video where he explained how, in high school, he acquired his first calculus textbook. He admitted that he initially felt utterly intimidated by the gibberish he found inside. He explained that the jump from algebra to calculus is greater than from arithmetic to algebra. Even so, as weeks went by, he came to catch himself understanding ever more of the previous gibberish so that within that quarter, he'd come to rely upon those previously baffling formulas. This seems the typical testimony of anybody's mastery. It tends to grow upon them slowly, perhaps eventually leading to a flash of realization. Not everyone finds mastery, though, and those who don't often remain baffled about why they couldn't experience that shift.

I was making small talk when driving The Grand Other to school yesterday. I had to nudge her to gain her attention because she's taken to pre-emptively inserting her earbuds to ward off the likelihood of just such conversations. She begrudgingly removed a bud, so I asked her how her e-sports practice was going. E-sports, for those like me who live in the tranquility of not even imagining that our grandchildren are studying competitive electronic game playing in place of curriculum in school, didn't know that video gaming could qualify as a competitive sport. Her school maintains a varsity e-sports team complete with a faculty coach, and she aspires to be the youngest and most female player in the school's history. I'm grateful that she's found a single subject to feel enthused about, so I'm supportively asking her what she learned yesterday.

"Today might not be the best day to ask me that question," she responded. "I thought it was a great question," I replied, "so what makes today a bad day to be asking a terrific question?" She took a long time responding, reporting that the day before, she'd learned that she was stupid. When I learned that her coach was absent, so she was teaching and coaching herself, I wondered if she could be qualified to declare herself stupid, if she was indeed stupid. I meant, could she be smart enough to authoritatively declare herself stupid? On the other hand, though, if she was more intelligent than she assessed, she might not possess adequate experience with stupidity to accurately assess its presence. We'd encountered the fundamental paradox of self-assessment. Who's actually qualified to pass judgment?

We went on to consider learning, which might be the serial discovery of unsettling possibilities about one's own capacity. It's way too easy to chase yourself off of any scent when the early assessment produces just what DeGrasse Tyson's perusal of his Calculus text did. It's always incomprehensible gibberish, and the path to mastering it seems inherently discouraging as if trying hard to convince the student they could never learn it. I've been chased off plenty in my time, and I hope for better coping skills for my granddaughter's continuing struggles. I never enjoyed learning like DeGrasse Tyson evidently had. I found it unsettling, and I couldn't always contain my aversion to those stupid feelings to prevent them from chasing me off.

The Muse, Kurt, our painter, and I were discussing the measurements for the porch decking. Kurt and I were considering angles while The Muse was calculating how much decking to order. She decided she needed to go out and take some direct measurements, and I offered to do that for her. She didn't precisely reject my offer, but she and Kurt were quickly out there measuring with me, only observing from a distance. The Muse knows me well enough to know that I'm not to be trusted with measurements. I never mastered my Calculus text, and those formulas remain absolutely mysterious. I've never felt the lack of calculus skills. They've never once come up as necessary. I suppose I've lived a limited life because I lack the GoodMeasure gene. I notice that it's an arbitrary choice precisely where to place the point representing any length, that every measure is at some level both indistinct and infinite. Others don't seem bothered by such baffling imprecision. I'm left feeling as stupid as our Grand Other probably felt when trying to learn to play her video game better.

Throughout the day, I found ample opportunity to judge my lack of Good Measure-ability. It seemed like everybody associated with the porch remodel came to me with questions I'd have to refer to The Muse or Joel, our carpenter. Some might say that my inability qualifies as a disability, that I'm somehow less me because I lack that specific mastery. I'm probably mostly me because I lack particular masteries. Nobody gets to be the master of every technique. Some excel at Good Measure, while others won't and never will. It might be that they never could have mastered that activity. How wonderful it would be if only we could foresee which pursuits would reject our attempts to master them so that we might chart courses more likely to reassure us. We grow brighter on the backs of our stupids, each either encouraging or dissuading us from further pursuit. Some people never seem to encounter their stupidity, and I feel deeply sorry for that absence.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz