I remember when, in about Grade 7, I discovered that math textbooks had the answers in the back. What a momentous mistake by the publishers, I thought. Why would anyone spend time "figuring out" the answers if they were provided? When my teachers told me that the answer on its own wasn't enough, that I had to show my work, I quickly learned that a little indecipherable chicken-scratch normally appeased them as long as the correct answer stood out clearly below the pseudo-calculations scrawled on the page.
It wasn't until Grade 11 or so that my arithmetic avoidances caught up with me, and -much to the chagrin of my engineer-father - I gave up on math and science in favour of English and history. In English, not only were the answers not in the back of the book, it soon became apparent that there were really no answers at all. This was a discipline that appealed to me more.
I don't know if it's the weather, the time of year, or something I ate, but I've been thinking a lot about "answers" these days. I've been reading about mindfulness and waxing philosophic - just generally being insufferable - and I kind of feel that I've reverted once again to the kid looking to the back of the book for the answer. What's it all about? How can we find meaning and purpose in life?
I'm probably not alone in this. Mass media - from Oprah to the Vancouver Sun - are continually pushing the answers for us: the simple commoditized solution to the good life. We all want it, and we want it packaged for easy consumption.
But I had a bit a revelation a week ago. I was studying a poem with a group of Grade 12s and said, as way of illustration of the seasons as a metaphor for life, that I was entering the "autumn of my life," the final third or so.
"That's depressing," one student said. And from the perspective of a 17 year-old -someone for whom life seems endless - it must be. But for those of us with a little bit of experience and - dare I say it, wisdom - we know that whether we hope to have 60 years, 60 months or 60 days left, the only thing we can be sure of having is today. In this very real sense, there's no difference being 17 and 51.
I don't know if that's the correct answer, but I'm willing to wait until I get to the end of this book to find out if I'm right.
