Dear Humans,

As a father, I have drawn a lot of baths. I’ve sat on the edge of the tub, tested the water, stirred, adjusted, tested, adjusted, stirred.

And there are a lot of ways to draw a bath. You can try to get the temperature perfect coming out of the spout or you can start scalding hot and cool it down or start cool and heat it up. It doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the final temperature when the bather dips their toe.

This is true for most of life: There are many ways of doing a thing. Instructions, algorithms, and recipes are nice and sometimes necessary. But usually when people talk about “the right way” of doing something, they really just mean “their way” of doing it.

You’ll know you’re really getting it when you see the whole picture well enough to come up with “your own way” of doing it.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt