Article February 10, 2014 Issue

A lesson in (meta)physics

Kyra Evarts

It was time for physics class, and as usual, I was dragging my feet, trying to think of any excuse not to attend. For what felt like the millionth time, I asked myself, Why does my teacher hate me?

It was still the beginning of my freshman year of high school, but from the first day I hadn’t gotten along with this teacher. It didn’t help that physics was a subject I did not particularly enjoy and didn’t think I was very good at. The teacher never seemed to be supportive of my learning, and even seemed to think I was stupid. Day after day, I would try to think of ways to get out of his class—but I would always end up there, unhappily slouched at my desk.

Eventually I just got fed up with letting one class, and one teacher, ruin my entire day, so I called a Christian Science practitioner to ask for prayerful support. She told me about an analogy her Christian Science teacher had shared with her. It went like this: If you had a dream that you lived on the other side of the world, and an elephant came into your house and destroyed all your things, what would you do when you woke up? Would you have to move back home and buy all new things? Of course not, because your things were never destroyed and you were never living on the other side of the world!