Let’s make a splash
Today’s reflection was handed to me on a silver platter by a year 10 student long ago and far away.
She said something like, ‘You know Fr. Oulton, I really like the way that we can splash about with crazy ideas in your class. We learn just as much from the discussion as we do from some crummy old textbook.’
Splashing about in the waters of ideas is a splendid pastime. Often, we try really hard to come up with a well-reasoned, logical answer that is always right. It works well in the maths world. But (un)fortunately, it's not just a maths world.
It's also a messy, murky, shifting, always evolving world. The answer is not easily found and is often illusory and inadequate for your problem.
So what if, in all our angst, frustration and solution-driven mentality, we simply stopped shouting, lowered our blood pressure and just splashed around in some alluring concepts for a while.
Those who go the hard road, yelling into the air and pumping their fist in the hunt for common sense and decent answers, might try slipping into a trendy pair of flamboyant bathers and just sploshing about in the water. Do some sprinkling and tossing with others. True, we’ll get a little damp, but the answers we are looking for are not to be discovered in numerals and theorems, placards and shouting. Our answers are in the action, playfulness, chortling, yippees and surprises.
Often, I thought I was just messing about with the ideas and proposals, getting drenched with others and getting saturated myself, only to learn that actually there was one other in the water with us. He is the most vigorous in his frolicking, loudest in laughter, the most sopping in water content, and I couldn’t wait to make a splash.