"discovered" the benzene ring had a dream about a snake coiling around back on itself grabbing its tail, and when he awoke he at once knew the elusive structure was a ring. Einstein very frequently awoke from naps with some great insight for whatever he was working on at the time. E=m(sleep)2 ? I love how the mind remains in motion while the body is at rest. . . .
This morning I awaken with some understanding of why Math was my childhood friend :)
There is a lot going on in my life right now. I feel pushed and pulled from every direction, and each side cries foul when the other side makes a decision about the best course of action for this next part of the journey. Even my cat Sarra is having her say! So I found it very interesting how two hours of math last night before I went to bed calmed the mind and settled down the thoughts.
In the early years, when my neural pathways were developed, they did so within a highly chaotic context. Enough said. But math, math has perfect order. The boundaries are clearly defined by regimented rules and immutable laws of logic. It's perfectly predictable. So when a rule says, "If you do this, then this will happen." by gum that is exactly what happens. There is no deception, no subtle seducing beneath the surface. Math is what it is. . . .nothing more than. . . .nothing less than.
Math helped me to survive the unpredictability of the sliding rules and blurred boundaries. Math helped to teach my brain to how to focus with crazy making chaos all around me, to create order out of that chaos, to find solutions to difficult & challenging problems, and to feel good about myself in the face of life's bitter truths that overwhelmed and undermined my sense of self identity. I may have failed miserably at everything else expected of me as a young child, but I was good at math. So math became my childhood friend.
I have always known that math is character building. How we approach the study of mathematics mirrors how we approach every other insurmountable problem in our life. If we look at a complex integral fraction and say, "Oh my gosh! That's too hard! I can't do that!" then that is exactly how we approach anything else that makes us feel overwhelmed and uncertain about our abilities. Math is so much more than just adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing. . . .math is the language that structures the skills of all problem solving. Math isn't just an abstract numbers game. . . .it develops the mind and changes the entire shape and form of a person's future!
So as a Math Teacher, I may not be able to change the circumstances of a child's family life at home (as I will leave that endeavor up to the blessed and over-worked social workers of the world), but I can make a difference that changes everything else for that child. . . .just as math has done for me.