Everything rests on a principle.
Thirteen
Do not hurry,
Do not rest.
Goethe
I teach Sunday School. I have one regular student right now, a thirteen year old boy. I do most of the talking . . .
During our last Sunday School class, I was talking about the ideas or principles behind things we can see, like letters, or numbers. I used the number thirteen as my example. I said, “If a one-year-old sees the number thirteen, they just think it’s a line with some squiggly shapes next to it. It really doesn’t mean much to them.”
My student wasn’t particularly interested in one-year- olds, or the number thirteen. I pressed on, “But if I give a one- year-old thirteen kittens, or kisses, they might have a better idea of thirteen.”
Later in the class, we started talking about France and how I had lived there when I was thirteen. He asked how I was able to go to school when I didn’t know the language.
I said, “Well, it was tricky. Mostly, I sat and watched everyone else. But, eventually, I started to get a few words, a few principles of grammar. Of course, I needed to be able to speak, and that helped. So did the fact that I wasn’t too worried about making mistakes; I was already at the bottom of the class. I had nowhere to go but up.”
We sat there for a moment, letting that sink in. He said, “I’ve never even been out of the country. I’d really love to go to France.”
I smiled and nodded, thinking back on how it felt to be thirteen. How I hadn’t cared about the principles behind the French language,I just wanted to be able to talk to my classmates. But that didn’t mean the principles of language acquisition weren’t in play. They were, I just wasn’t conscious of them, not in a way I could have explained.
When I was in grad school I learned that there are two different ways of moving – skeletal and muscular. Skeletal movement accesses the underlying structure of our bodies, and lets that propel us. Muscular movement happens when we force things, – cause things to happen, and it feels like the skeleton follows.
I tried it one day when I was in dance class; just let my skeleton move me. It was amazing. It felt effortless, infinite almost, as I never really got tired, even though I was moving as much as when I consciously used my muscles.
A principle of movement had been explained to me, I had tested it on myself, and I had learned a valuable lesson about movement, and about life.
The thing about universal principles is that they are always there. As we need to know about them, and are ready to use them, they appear in our lives. Like skeletons, principles hold us up, give our lives shape, enable us to move, even to dance, – whether we understand how they work yet, or not.
My thirteen year old friend might not have cared about the principles behind numbers, or divinity, but he certainly cared about something. We all do.
The trick is to find the cause behind a good outcome, and repeat it. Whether in speaking a language, dancing, or living. Then, like my imaginary one year old, you can't help but feel loved.
