Tell me the answer.

The greatest thing I found about teaching was when some student would come up with a very smart answer. Theses smart answers often left me on the horns of a dilemma, was it right or was it wrong?

Do I give some credit to the student for showing the ability to think out of the box? Or did I take the hard and fast ruling it is wrong so it is wrong, end of the story?

Some questions call for accurate answers and it is easy to decide if they are right or wrong and in this age of computers and internet, it is fairly easy to find those answers so we have no need for discussion or argument.

One such example of such a question would be.

How deep is the ocean; how high is the sky? And the answer.

At its deepest, in the Mariana Trench, located in the Pacific, the ocean reaches 6.856 miles. The troposphere, which includes the layer of air we breathe, is about 10 miles high, but the atmosphere extends upward more than 600 miles. 

Seems simple but a smart student would also explain how this was a proven fact.

Now a much more complex question with much room for error would be.

At what point did the straw break the camel's back? 

In his Treatise on One-Humped Camels in Health and in Disease, A. S. Leese reports that camels can generally carry from 240 up to 1200 pounds, which only "the very best animals" can manage. The record for camel capacity in Australia is 1904 pounds. 

But the smart student would also ask if that, in fact, broke the camels back.

Then we get into the realms of those questions that bring a smile and you just want to say correct.

For example.

What do we call the science of classying living things? What would you say to the answer, Racism?

Or if you asked a question such as, "Briefly explain what hard water is." And the answer given is,  "Ice."

Are you smiling yet? Now there is an easy question to answer.

One last little one.  "What ended in 1896?"  The answer given.  "1895"

Now what has all of this to do with Life? 

Well simple.  Bothe the Buddha and Lao Tzu said there are many questions that are so often left unasked. Or even more simply put why fret over some things when it is so much simpler and makes life so much easier to just go with the flow.

The painting? I have been swimming in the sea for the past few days so felt I wanted to paint something to do with it.  This one I am calling, "Moonlight Journey Heading Home."

Have a carefree day.