Beautiful symmetry

We are hardwired to love symmetry. It's a subconscious marker of beauty and reproductive fitness. It also is a valuable signal that lets us know if something is just "right".

I've had two powerful examples of symmetry this year worth sharing.

I emailed the coach of the Red Tails Swim team to find out if my son could join the team even though he has little swimming experience. Coach Danny replied that he was ok with having my son come in to check out the team.

"Coach Danny... I know this is unlikely... but did you coach the Marlins swim team back in the late 80s?"

It turns out he did. The man that coached me when I was ten years old is now coaching my ten year old son Adam.

Sitting in the sidelines of swim practice brought a swirl of memories that I didn't know existed in me. Coach Danny makes the same "READY...HWOP" sound to let kids know its time to push off the wall and begin swimming. I hadn't heard that sound since high school but hearing him took me immediately back to the 68th street YMCA. Watching him walk back and forth as he picked a student to follow and corrected them when they got to the other end of the pool brought me right back.

Just recently, one of my favorite middle school teachers, Eric, who is the chair of the Humanities department at his school, invited me to his school to share my Sketching for Science program that I have been writing about and developing with his administration.

At the meeting I shared with Eric and his principal how I vividly remembered the demo lesson Eric gave back in 1989. Eric talked about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the changing of the political structure of communism and the history that brought us to that moment. I was so incredibly excited to talk about "the present" with a teacher. No disrespect to other teachers but history in elementary school mostly meant learning about something that happened hundreds of years ago. Now I was not only discussing "current events" and learning how history informs the present, I was being allowed to challenge my teacher and have him respectfully listen to me and gently push back on my ideas!

Eric didn't remember a single detail about his demo lesson, but that is natural. I've had dozens of students tell me stories about things that meant a lot to them that I don't remotely recall. None of the lessons that I spent hours planning stick with students but the conversations we have stick with them.

It's funny how the ways we impact other people are rarely the things that we spend time consciously developing.

Eric told me that he is planning on retiring soon. He said that he was so glad to be able to connect with me and he loved the fact that I was there at the very beginning of his career and that now I am coming in at the tail end of his career and will be coming in to teach him something before he retires. "This sort of made my life make sense. It's a beautiful symmetry." he said to me.

Symmetry is an important concept in evolution. We are keenly aware and conscious of features of our body that are asymmetrical. Conversely, even taking cultural beauty norms into account, we are incredibly attracted to features that are extremely symmetrical.

Our brain is constantly looking out for moments of asymmetry that could represent a warning or lack of fitness. This is so ingrained at a genetic level it seems to apply across species:

• Female birds use male body symmetry as a criteria for mate selection.
• Female moths have a symmetry preference, where "selection favored males with longer and more symmetrical hind wings and antennae."
• Bees prefer more symmetrical flowers when they choose where to land and acquire nectar.

We might not consciously be aware of it but when something attracts our attention there is a good chance the symmetry or lack of it is part of what we are drawn to.

I think this is true for our life experiences also. I happened to have had the pleasure of two fantastic moments of such powerful symmetry that they completely eliminated any of the normal doubt and concerns that I have before taking a step forward.

I had been hemming and hawing about getting Adam involved in some kind of a sports program for over a year. I talked about swimming but I also talked about basketball. I appreciated that he enjoyed baseball but I didn't think it was active enough but at the same time I didn't really want to go through the hassle of finding a new sport and having to deal with the disruption that the sport would bring to our already chaotic life.

Seeing coach Danny at the first trial practice removed any and all doubt in my mind about having Adam join the team. I knew right then and there that I would move my schedule around however I had to in order for Adam to join the team. I didn't mind sitting for hours in the bleachers or taking him to meets, I just knew that this absolutely had to be the right thing for him.

Likewise when Eric invited me to his school to talk I knew that I absolutely would happily move mountains if I had to in order to make this happen.

Good teachers stay with you forever. These men taught me concrete things but they served as role models for me and directly and indirectly influenced the man I am today.

I worry about what is being lost as students spend more of their formative years learning in front of a screen and how they will spend less time directly interacting with teachers. There is far more of a "transactional" nature between students and teachers now than there was when I began teaching.

Part of that could be me getting older and having less time to connect with students but I suspect that the more time a student is in front of a screen the less we can connect in a meaningful way. Can I offer them something valuable enough to relinquish their precious attention from the screen? I rarely can; I am just not a good enough teacher but honestly nobody can compete with novel dopamine rush that you get from a screen.

What this means is that not only are students losing something in the immediate moment when their attention is not in the present, we are both, student and teacher, losing some kind of future opportunity to recapture that connection and goodwill down the road.

We can't control when moments of symmetry come into our life but we can influence the possibility of these things occurring. These two moments occurred in my life because I care about maintaining ties to my past and I actively try and reach out to people that meant something to me. I also am happy to express these feelings to people and let them know how much they mean to me.

But I think more important than my keeping in touch with people is the fact that I try my best to pay attention to recognizing beauty and symmetry. If you seek things out and are open to beauty coming into your life then you will more likely recognize it when you encounter it.

Maintaining our human connections and paying conscious attention to the opportunities to experience what the world can offer will enrich our lives more than anything I can think of. I only hope that we haven't digitally numbed our students, and also ourselves, to these experiences.

I am very happy to share that the Elham Fund sent $5000.00 and purchased 360 kilos of flour this week and rented two water trucks in Gaza. This will provide two weeks worth of food and water for 30 families.

Check out my writing on Substack if you want to read more about these charitable endeavors.

I'm excited to share that my first peer reviewed paper has been approved for publication in Science Scope.

Hopefully I will be posting the published article sometime next year!

My film is progressing beautifully. I should be seeing a rough assembly of the film in April, meaning I will see a complete movie without lighting, sound and music. If all goes well I will be able to start submitting Tabula Rasa to film festivals in the spring and summer! Stay tuned!