‘Why the time and effort you invest don’t translate into results’
-How Should You Live This One-Purchase Life?-
From high school through college and all the way through job hunting, I studied so—-so hard, and yet my test scores never seemed to come out at even half of what I’d put in. So every single morning and every single night, I’d pray, “Please, just let it come out as much as I actually studied…” I mean, I begged for it.
When I chew it over now, I wonder if, in the name of “self-directed learning,” all I really did was memorize.
How the exam would be shaped, how the questions would come at me, why they were written that way — I don’t think I ever got a feel for the nature of how questions are made, for the underlying principles. I just took the hits and hoped to grow from them, and maybe my head was simply too small to keep up with the question-writers straining to invent one more newnew Thing.
[Where I Am Now]
So then, what about now — now that I can go beyond just the exam questions and “wrestle with the essence of life, sit with it, and work through it in a style all my own”?
I did try to grasp the essence of the math problem right in front of me, but I think what really carried me was the “power to see the essence of things” — everything I picked up through the countless lives and experiences of my twenties and thirties.
[Going Forward]
If I keep taking it one step at a time — meeting new problems, getting knocked down, wrestling with them — then in the end, no matter how hard the situation, I’ll grow the strength and the ease to decide by my own standard.
Isn’t that all life really is?
My own standard, and a little ease.
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