Keeping It Simple

This quote leapt out at me as I was looking for a photo of Albert Einstein:

” If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”

An other way of putting it is

Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)

Wow – that makes sense. When we are learning something new, or trying to understand something big – like LIFE itself, there’s a lot of questioning, exploring, thinking, challenging and more thinking. Confusion is natural, especially when the answers to the questions don’t magically appear…… Instead of trying harder to learn more, I’m taking a cue from my high school days…

In my first year of chemistry it felt so alien. It didn’t make any sense. I was totally confused by it. Then I had a good teacher who showed me what was behind the symbols and equations. It began to make sense …. but it didn’t inspire me at all. This wasn’t the path for me.

When I took biology the story started out the same. There was so much to learn that was new. New ways of seeing things and words that made little sense. As a learner there is always questioning and analyzing until we understand more. There’s also some uncertainty around if  we are getting it right…. Mrs Marshall was my teacher. She was encouraging and shared her own love of nature and curiosity about what makes living things live. I was inspired. Biology was a wondrous  world to explore and learn about.

So my experience of understanding life, and perhaps yours too, is a bit like this. Lots of questioning at times. Add some conflicting messages, strange symbols, and a lot of unknowns, and it gets complicated. It isn’t easy to keep it simple until we begin to understand. And even then, its often takes good teachers to help us find our way.

When we can explain it simply, we understand it well enough.

I’ll be exploring being simple (and hopefully not stupid) in more posts!

Thank you Albert Einstein….