Why Write Backwards?

What the heck does writing backwards have to do with math?
For me, it’s a sort of warm-up exercise to get me into the creative, non-judgemental flow of opening my mind. This helps let answers come to me that my mind would otherwise have blocked out. It makes thinking less of a chore and more of a “party in my mind.”

Have you ever wanted to jog, but were too lazy to get going on your daily run? But if you suit up, and start stretching, all of a sudden it becomes a “given” that you are going to run. You look forward to it. You can’t wait to get the stretching over and get running.

That’s what backwards writing can be like. It’s not something that you have to be good at. You can just write a word forwards, and then next to it or beneath it, try writing it backwards. Try it. It doesn’t have to look good. Nobody gets graded on how they write backwards.

By the way, this exercise will also improve your penmanship. I know that in this century penmanship is a lost art (so is being able to calculate in your head, or memorization skills; pretty soon even typing will be a lost art when voice-recognition software develops further) but it shouldn’t be. It has been part of being human for thousands of years. It is a great hand-eye coordination developing skill.

Use it or lose it

People who cannot write in cursive, or do not use it daily, do not develop other skills as easily. Same with calculating or reading daily. If you don’t read, you don’t practice comprehending new information actively. It’s not the same as watching YouTube. If you don’t keep up with your reading, it’s a skill you can lose after awhile.

In my own life, I’ve noticed that I’ve not read for “pleasure” for many years. I used to read like crazy. Sometimes I read a book a day. Then, about nine years ago I got into math and computers, and I have barely read five novels since then. As I thought about that while I wrote the last post, I realized how much I’ve been missing. It was a great relaxer and a great mind-stretcher. So I’ve decided to cut back my TV watching to maybe fifteen minutes a day, plus “The Daily Show.” The other hour or so I might have spent watching some crap, will be used to read. At the moment, I’m on Dashiell Hammett’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell_Hammett “The Red Harvest.” I’m so glad I started reading again. Hammett is amazing. He sure beats watching “SVU” re-runs.

Back to writing backwards:

In our “immediate gratification” culture, people (children, or immature people, mostly) tend to ask, “What good is it for?” That is a question that presumes many things. It presumes that if you can’t read the future and say exactly what it’s good for, it has no value. What a stupid Idea that is.

The question is a trap. It is not an honest question. No one can ever know what good learning a general skill might be for. It would be like a baby asking, “Why do I have to put the effort into learning to walk? This crawling thing has been working well enough for me so far.”

How can you explain to a baby what walking might be good for? He doesn’t know any of the things he might want to do with it someday. You could explain that he could use it to walk to his friend’s house and play with him. But he’d think, “Bullcrap! You can just drive me to the play-date (god, is that a distasteful word!) like you always do!”

If you told a baby he could use it to walk to the store to buy an X-box, he’d think, “Why is this adult trying to feed me this bullcrap again? I don’t know what a store is, and I don’t know what an x-Box is. Why should I spend any time or effort learning how to walk for that? What a bullcrap reason.”

So when you try to tell a teenager “why” he should learn math, how to do a weird skill, etc., you’re up against the same thing. “Why should I learn that? I’ll never need it.” If you try to answer that with specifics, you’ll get the same baby-answers.

For example, if you say, “Well, it will help you get a good job.” They’ll come up with all the things they want to do in the future, none of them having anything to do with math (at least in their minds). Like, “But I’m going to be a professional skateboarder, man!” Or, “I’m going to be a writer, I don’t need that.”

If you are an adult reading this, you know all the reasons that the above examples are silly, immature rationalizing. But you didn’t understand that when you were a teenager, either (I know I didn’t). So why would we expect little Johnny Rotten to understand that, either?

Notice how no child who wants a bicycle or an X-box would ever put up with a parent asking him/her, “What good is it for?” So when a child asks, “What good is it for, and demands an answer, don’t feel like you own the child a direct answer. It is like one of those questions that a Zen master might answer with, “MU!” (loosly, “Un-ask the question.”)

The only way to get them to appreciate any of the values of math, strange skills, classical knowledge, etc, is to get them to experience it for themselves.

What is the value of riding a bike? Sure, you can use a bike to get places, but it is fun to ride for it’s own sake! But you can’t know that until you try it.

So how can you get someone to try it? There are lots of ways, but one of them is to try it yourself, and find enjoyment in it. If you hate math, there is no way you are going to get your child to love it. You must find at least something you like about math that makes your child curious. You can’t force a kid, but you can inspire one. And that inspiration doesn’t come from nagging.

When I was a kid (pleistocene epoch), my parents would nag the hell out of me to do my homework. Yet I never saw them actually study anything. So I never gave any value to it. On the other hand, they both were (and still are) great readers. They were always reading books, talking about books, and I could sense their great enjoyment whenever they were reading. Well, if reading was so much fun, hell, I wanted to do that, too.

My dad built model airplanes. He loves hobbies. Even when I was a toddler I knew that was something I wanted to try. I used to “help” him by handing him parts to the models he was building. I know that bugged the hell out of him, because he probably wanted some “alone time” from the kids when he did his hobbies, but I’m glad he occasionally let me help, because hobbies are a huge, enjoyable part of my life now. I can’t imagine how a person could not enjoy a hobby.

That “meditative state” you enter when you do your hobby, or the “zone” you are in when you do art, sports, music, etc., that is the “what good it’s for.” But you can’t explain that (as evidenced by this post!) You just have to do it, and hope that it will inspire others to try it.

To that end, I’m going to practice some left-handed writing now (I’m right-handed).

Want to join me?

(video of this to be added later today, Thurs., May 9.)
Hoskeebo!

Next post: Some hidden benefits of writing backwards, or with your non-dominant hand.