Part 6 of the 20-part Between Mind and Body series

In eighth grade, algebra felt like a foreign language to me.

Part of it may have had to do with the way my mind works, something that is still true for me now. Maybe it is a bit of ADD, or maybe it is just the way my attention tends to move. Not in a fantasizing kind of way, but more in an observational direction. I notice things. I think about things. My mind quietly follows its own path. The problem in class was that the lesson kept moving, and once I lost track of what the teacher was explaining, it was hard to catch back up.

I would sit there watching equations go up on the chalkboard, and before long the numbers, letters, and symbols would all start blending together. Somehow it seemed to make sense to other kids, but not to me. I tried to follow along, but I just could not see how they were getting from one step to the next. It was frustrating, and it made me feel a little alone in it.

I finally told my sister how lost I was. Math was not really her thing either, but she had a friend who was very good at it, and she volunteered to help me.

That turned out to be a very important moment for me.

What made the difference was not just that she knew algebra. It was the way she helped me look at it. Until then, it all felt like random rules and symbols coming at me from different directions. But she showed me that there was a logic to it, that each part had a place and each step followed from the one before it. Instead of seeing a confusing mess on the board, I began to see a kind of structure. It was as if she turned on a light and showed me how to follow the path from one side of the problem to the other.

And then came one of those real aha moments.

All at once, it started becoming clearer. I could see the order in it. I could see how one step connected to the next. It was not that I suddenly became a math genius, but I was no longer completely in the dark. Something had shifted. I was seeing it differently, and that new way of looking at it helped me not only with algebra, but with the higher math classes that came later too.

That experience stayed with me because it showed me something important. Sometimes the problem is not that we are incapable. Sometimes we just are not seeing something clearly yet. Sometimes all it takes is a different way of looking at something, and what once felt impossible begins to make sense.

Looking back, I can see something else too. The same mind that could drift and lose the thread in class was also a mind that noticed. It observed. It took things in quietly. At the time, that did not always help me in school. But later in life, I began to see that this way of noticing also had value. It became part of how I came to understand awareness.

Awareness is the moment we begin to notice what has been there all along, but has not yet fully come into view. It might be something in the mind, something in the body, or something in the way we react to life. It might be tension we have been carrying, a feeling we have been avoiding, or a pattern we keep repeating without even realizing it.

My mom showed me a great deal about awareness, not by sitting me down and defining it, but through the way she lived. She had a way of noticing things. She paid attention. She was present. She could often sense what was going on underneath the surface. Watching her, I came to understand that awareness is not just about thinking harder. It is about noticing more clearly. It is about being present enough to catch what is happening within us and around us before it slips by unnoticed.

In a way, that algebra experience and what I learned from my mother are connected. One showed me how a different way of seeing could suddenly bring clarity. The other showed me that awareness begins with presence, with noticing, and with learning how to stay with what is there.

That is why awareness matters so much.

Without it, we move through life on automatic. We repeat the same reactions. We carry the same tension. We live inside the same habits, moods, and assumptions without really seeing them. But when awareness begins to arise, something starts to shift. There is a little more space. A little more light. And in that space, we are no longer completely at the mercy of what has been quietly shaping us underneath.

Everything does not suddenly become fixed, of course. But something has finally been seen. Once we can truly see what is there, we begin to have a different relationship with it. We may still have work to do, but now we are awake to it. And sometimes that quiet awakening is where real change begins.