The Point

Amy worked as a Mathematics teacher in the local school for over thirty years. Her sixtieth birthday also marked her last day at school, as a teacher. That day she remembered her last day at school as a student, how happy she was back then! How the feelings of leaving school had changed in all those years. Time had transformed her from the immature pupil to a matured teacher, who felt a mixture of emotions. A contentment of having lived through years of imparting education, of being a useful member of society, a subtle sadness of having to depart from all who were so dear and part of her daily life all these years and a small measure of some apprehensive joy for the prospective freedom from daily duties.

Though she was relieved at the prospect of being free from the daily routine of teaching, she was concerned about maintaining a balanced life without the rigid framework of a disciplined routine. “Routine as though provides a skeletal framework on which we hang the clothes of moments of our lifetimes and wear that body to operate in the world”.

"Routine as though provides a skeletal framework on which we hang the clothes of moments of our lifetimes and wear that body to operate in the world"

It seemed quite a challenge to not sink into the dungeon of laziness and loneliness and maintain a balanced lifestyle without any rigid discipline. Being a school teacher, she was accustomed to discipline and woke early in the morning. She decided to go for morning walks instead of her usual evening strolls, to keep healthy as a priority. She was going to miss the multitude of students, the pandemonium of voices and the up and about lifestyle of school. The gap was huge, given her silent and solitary lifestyle at home. The change was inevitable, and adapting to the change was the only option at hand. Life was slowly going to slow down, and the rest of life seemed to be a preparation for the final halt.

She pulled out the advertisement pamphlets from the mailbox and skimmed quickly through them, when one of them caught her view. It read “Active Ageing Activity for Seniors - Maintain Inner Balance by Practicing Visual Balance through Sacred Geometry”. Sacred geometry?! Amy questioned abstractly as she had never heard of it before. She had taught solid and planar geometry for years, but what was sacred geometry? This interested her as much as it intrigued her. Curious she called up the number in the footnote of the pamphlet. They fixed up a session for Thursday morning and she looked forward to attend her first class of Sacred Geometry. Life never ceases to teach you as long as you are ready to learn. Amy had learnt many things in her career as a teacher, but now the teacher was to formally become a student once again…and she was getting a feeling of life coming full circle to complete the life-cycle perhaps.

"Life never ceases to teach you as long as you are ready to learn"

It was Thursday morning, the wait was finally over…she was there in the classroom, right on time. Soon the room was filled with around ten seniors about her age, who were to attend this active ageing exercise of balance through sacred geometry. Their instructor, Charles, who was a fit bearded man of around seventy years of age, accompanied by a learning support team of two youngsters distributed the drawing materials to the group. Charles introduced them to the basics beginning with a ‘Point’.

Charles had spent some twenty years learning and teaching Sacred Geometry. He passionately delivered the basics of the subject, and the group never felt that he was delivering the basic course for the 105th time. Energetic and enthusiastic, he was a perfect representative of how active ageing adults should be going about their life. Amy felt she had a lot to learn from him!

Even though she had spent years teaching concepts of geometry, she felt as if for the first time she was observing intently, something as small as a ‘point’. It seemed to her that she was looking at it through some renewed, magnified vision. How a small point was beginning to look big, of course not in size but in the potential and possibility of creation that it held within itself.

As the session progressed, she discovered how each point was a potential creation. Extend it in a single direction and it becomes a ray, stretch it infinitely on both sides in a plane and it becomes an infinite line or join it with other points in any direction in space to make all sorts of shapes. She had never imagined that a small thing as a point could be so versatile!

That day she went home and Googled, ‘making a point’ with the hope of searching versatility of methods or ways in which the versatile ‘Point’ could be constructed; but hit a list of dictionary meanings and synonyms for ‘making a point’ in the literary sense instead. The dictionary expounded ‘Making a point’ as emphasizing or putting stress on something; and this revealed to her another aspect of the point which was literally made by placing the pencil tip on paper and stressing it to the extent of creating an impression without getting across.

Amy picked up these points, stringed them together with the thread of her awareness and concluded, “To make a point, an impression is enough, getting across is not imperative”…then added “Yes, because perception is the prerogative of the one who perceives.”

She smiled and felt content at discovering the synchronicity of literary and geometrical ‘Points’ and looked forward to her next session of Inner Balance.

{To be continued...}