"Show your work"

At one time, I had planned to be a physicist. I wanted to work for the Pentagon, designing energy weapons. It seemed like the thing to do, during the Cold War, when one diplomatic or military miscue could rain nuclear destruction down on everyone. A dual major in English and Physics was only natural, since I was a decent writer and a decent scientist.

Unfortunately, the math kicked my ass.

I could explain how things would work. I could even build the experiment to demonstrate it. But I just couldn't do the math. "Solve for X," the exam would say, in bold letters glaring up from the smelly mimeographed paper. "Show your work."

I couldn't show my work. And so I failed.

Which worked out well, actually, since I did much better things with my life (and probably made more money) by writing, and by helping people, not by figuring out new and better ways to kill them. (The old ways work just fine, really.)

So I was reading my classmate Heather Byer's book, "Sweet: An Eight-Ball Odyssey," and in it, she discusses people and events in her life, and how those things shaped her goals and her motivations and even her personality. She analyzes these things, and basically says, "A+B-C+D=Heather." Not so succinctly, of course, or it would be a dull read. But she does connect the dots, and you can see the maturation process at work, as the hammers of events shape her life upon the anvil of experience.

It got me to thinking about my own life. How did I get here? How did I become the person I am? I like who I am, and I'm happy. But can I point to this person, or to that experience, or to a sequence of events, and string it all together into a narrative which says, "A+B-C+D=Marvin?"

No.

And it makes me nervous. Because I cannot show my work. Not as Heather has.

Does that invalidate my experiences? Does it mean that I am not who I think I am? Or at least, not for the reasons that I thought?

"Show your work." The phrase still haunts me.

Now, certainly, Heather has had years in which to craft her book. Countless nights of rumination and self-analysis, hours of discussions with friends and family, reams of notes... all of this no doubt preceded her finished tome which wrapped up things so neatly in a presentable package.

I have nothing but the endless dialogue in my head, a conversation with myself that I have at all times in my mind, even when I'm asleep. That conversation began around age six, and has continued ever since; analyzing, processing, constructing the person that I know as me. And unfortunately, I haven't been taking notes.

My female friend B said, "She (Heather) has done a good job of analyzing herself and her relationships because that's what girls do, endlessly. Boys don't do that. And you should be glad you don't."

I know she's right, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

But then, there is evidence to suggest that this planet is a school, and we are here by choice, to learn the lessons that we planned out for ourselves before we arrived in corporeal form. And I don't think there's a written test at the end. We either learn our lessons, or we don't. We grow as thinking, feeling, loving entities, or we don't. If we don't learn, we are stuck here, to repeat the lessons until we "get" it.

I think I am learning my lessons here, even though I cannot show my work.

Hopefully when it comes time to turn in my final exam, God will accept the answer of "Marvin" without questioning how I arrived at it.