Solving

Of all of the Giftings, one of the most universal across the professions is solving, that is, the gift of being able to figure out and resolve problems.

Think about it – when you go see your doctor with a vague complaint, you want her to listen to your complaints, run some tests, perhaps get some expert input, then diagnose and treat your issue. The engineer tasked with building a highway across muskeg applies exactly the same skill set, as does the machinist wondering why he couldn’t use a certain coating to permit a lighter tubing.

Solving isn’t just raw intelligence, it’s also a way of looking at things. Most good solvers have high spatial aptitude – they’re always seeing how things fit together. They’re conscious of gaps, and how the gaps remind them of “something else”. Solvers tend to be tinkerers who can’t leave well enough alone, but obsessively tweak things to make them faster, quieter, smaller, tastier, or what have you.

Lief Erikson was a solver when he found Vinland, and David Thompson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Thompson_(explorer)) was a solver when he mapped Western North America. Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, and Stephen Hawking were solvers, as of course were Einstein and Archimedes. But you and I are solvers, or we can be.

Solving is an innate ability which can be shaped and enhanced by experience and by training, or can be left to rust and atrophy by lack of opportunity. If there is any one thing that educators and parents can do for young people, it is to help them find and develop their gift of solving.

We cheat kids when we make things too easy or don’t put puzzles and problems in their pathway. Kids that help with meal preparation or other domestic chores have opportunities to learn process and method. When you “help” your kids by answering their homework questions, you are robbing them of the exercise they need to develop mental muscle.

Rote learning has its place in supplying the raw material for problem solving, but only so far. For a child, learning the “times table” by rote is of some utility, but “getting” the patterns of the “five times table” or the mental math tricks of multiplying by eleven, fifteen, or twenty-five opens up methodologies of wide application. Kids who learn by puzzling their way along develop powerful toolkits for cracking all kinds of conundrums. Or is that conundra?

Solving is not just a professional Gifting, it’s a lifestyle Gifting. Solving is the scratch to curiosity’s itch, and curiosity is the thing which keeps us young and active even into our late years. Solvers are interesting and valued people – we enjoy their company.

We cheat ourselves and our world by submitting to dogma and conformity, — these tell us there are already solutions for every question. Professions which become hidebound will die, and societies which fall into theocracy or reactionism are doomed to perish. Fortunately, solvers are irrepressable.

The good news is that solving is an aptitude we all possess to some degree, and one that can be cultivated. We do this mostly by seeking and meeting challenges and by breaking down the barriers which face us. And that can’t be anything but a win.