My youngest sibling is 17 years younger than me. My mother gave birth to her when she was 41. I was in high school then. My other sister and I took turns in taking care of our bunso (youngest child in the family).
I would give her a bath and I can’t recall why I used bath time to practice her spelling skills. It would go like this.
Ning: Spell 1.
Bunso: One…O N E…One!
Ning: Spell 2.
Bunso: Two...T W O…Two!
Ning: Spell 3
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Bunso: Three…T H R E E…Three!
We reach the number 10 and then I asked her to spell 11.
Bunso: Eleven...one…one…Eleven!
I could not stop laughing. IJBOL in today’s world. She was not entirely wrong because there were indeed 2 ones that represent the number 11.
It’s amazing how someone as young as 2 years old processed the visual representation of 11 into how she spelled the word.
Lately, I noticed another difference between my other sister and myself when we process a 6 digit number. My sister would call out the digits in group of 3 digits whereas I would call out the digits in group of 2 digits.
How strange it is that we were raised by the same parents and we went to the same school for our early education and yet we processed things differently.
In the work environment, we love to standardize things so that anybody can quickly take over another person’s work. Even with the standards, activities are not completed consistently because it is various individuals who are wired differently that produce the outcome.
A potential cause of tension at work occurs when a team member does not do things the way a team lead would do it. The team lead is stressed because he/she would like things done a certain way. He/She gets upset when a team member does not get how he/she likes things done. The team member is stressed because he/she does not feel empowered if he/she had to do things the team lead’s way.
Maybe if we learn to appreciate that we are all different, for as long as we can focus on the outcome, then we wouldn’t be too hung up on getting things done our way.
