Feathers vs Stones
Sitting in math class when I was nine years old I was taught a lesson that would stick with me for the rest of my life.
My teacher asked us the age old question: Which is heavier; a kilogram of stones or a kilogram of feathers?
And I broke.
My brain could not fathom that 1kg of stones was as heavy as 1kg of feathers. I was literally blind to the concept. I could not see the facts. Not for a short period either, I’m talking about hours here. This was the sole focus of my entire day. I was sitting with the top mathematical minds at Grayston Preparatory school in grade 4 (or 5, I can’t remember) and I was literally the only person who could not grasp this simple concept.
This video illustrates how I felt pretty well:
Years and years later, I obviously understand the concept but the feeling I experienced that day has never left me. Sitting in a room with 30 other people who all believed and understood something so simple and being the only one on the other side of the fence trying but failing to explain why the just cannot be equally heavy. The helplessness that I felt while people tried with no success to make me see the way, the light and the simple mathematical answer was immense. I felt stupid. I felt angry. Then I felt infuriated and tricked. I was too smart to not grasp this. I held the right view. Everyone else was ganging up on me. They were obviously the morons.
I can still feel that awkward knot in my stomach. We’ve all felt it sitting in a meeting with our colleagues and just not understanding what the fuck is going on. I hate that feeling.
That feeling changed my life.
Thanks to that feeling I have developed a voracious hunger to understand things. Only recently, however, did I realise the true value in the lesson: Not everyone sees the world in the same way, no matter what the facts might suggest. A good example of this is climate change or evolution. Both undeniable but there are millions of people who don’t recognise either as real and viable. This can be thought of as confirmation bias or a variety of other psychological wonders that push intelligent people away from facts and towards a pre-existing belief.
How does this affect me today? When I am communicating with someone and they just don’t understand what I’m trying to say, I often think back to the stones and feathers and wonder upon which side of the opinion I’m sitting. Am I the one holding the facts who just cannot believe that the other person doesn’t agree with me? Or am I the person looking at the facts with cold disbelief?
It can be difficult to figure out which side of the spectrum you may be sitting on. You don’t ever want to be the person who doesn’t ask themselves the question.
Question everything.
