There is a humble creativity in performing ordinary tasks like making the bed or folding clothesβjobs that must be done day after monotonous day and that fail to amount to anything momentous in the end. Yet such tasks are intensely creationalβthey bring a new layer of order and beauty into the world we inhabit.
Iβve always found it touching that after Christ had risen from the grave, He apparently stopped to fold the grave cloth that covered His head (John 20:7).
βNo, unfortunately, in my case, all that energy was wasted on other things.β
βWhat other things?β
βOn my friends. I had some very close friends, but as it turned out they weren't the sort you could play baseball or kick-the-can with. In fact, playing with them didn't involve moving at all.β
βWere your friends sick?β
βJust the opposite. They were big and strong as a rock. But since they lived in my head, I could only play with them thereβ¦β
It was a melodramatic sort of anger.
"A problem has a rhythm of its own, just like a piece of music," the Professor said. "Once you get the rhythm, you get the sense of the problem as a whole, and you can see where the traps might be waiting."
Among the many things that made the Professor an excellent teacher was the fact that he wasn't afraid to say "we don't know." For the Professor, there was no shame in admitting you didn't have the answer, it was a necessary step toward the truth. It was as important to teach us about the unknown or the unknowable as it was to teach us what had already been safely proven.