What do wrestling, geometry and our next big problem have in common? To be honest, they may have nothing in common for you, but they do for me. I’ll explain.
When I was in high school, physical education was required for all students every year of their time in high school. In my junior year, our school received a student teacher in physical education. He was tasked with creating six weeks of lesson plans that he would teach and for which he would be evaluated as a new teacher. This guy was a college wrestling athlete, and his six weeks unit with us was teaching us to wreste. Roll out the mats. Get on the mat, two at a time, and with some basic instruction on the rules and various “legal moves”, we took turns trying out this ancient form of competition. I was immediately drawn to this sport, and it was for this reason alone. Second by second, I had to use my imagination to counter whatever move my opponent made while simultaneously using my imagination to create my next unknown move against him. Our repertoire of legal moves was surprisingly small. Imagination, it seems, was the key. I had within me the moves we were allowed to use. Every single wrestling round required fresh imagination, in the moment, for how to use those moves. That was both exhilarating and exhausting.
So, what about geometry? In my sophomore year of high school, this was the required math class. We seemed to spend a lot of time memorizing theorems and corollaries that defined space and relationships of points in space. Then, the day came when our teacher introduced us to working on proofs. We were given a problem involving angles, lines and shapes. Using the theorems and corollaries we had memorized, we had to solve the problem and prove why the solution worked. Geometry was my favorite math class simply because each proof given to us to solve required me to use my imagination for how what I knew could be used to figure out what I didn’t know. It suggested to me that I already had what I needed inside of me. The challenge was figuring out how to use it for the problem at hand.
Wrestling and geometry were both, at first, really intimidating to me. They were unlike other sports and mathematics that I was already familiar with. They represented change, a new way of thinking. And, they required imagination as a basic requirement.
I didn’t go on to become a wrestling athlete or a mathematician. But, decades later, I remember those experiences as life changing. Oh, and that last piece. The problem we face today? It is very likely that we, and our allies, have inside of us what we need to navigate it–but imagination is required.
~Bob Patrick
