The pupil who learned the likeness

Two driving instructors in Riyadh teach the same route to the test centre.

The first has his pupils learn it by heart. Left at the mosque, second exit at the roundabout, slow down by the school, signal before the petrol station. His pupils pass, as long as the examiner sticks to that road.

The second teaches the same road differently. A roundabout, he tells them, is a doorway a crowd is trying to get through: whoever is already inside goes first, and you wait your turn. A merging lane is a queue at a counter. A school zone is a living room with children on the floor.

His pupils take longer to start. Then the examiner turns down a street none of them has seen, and they cope, because they are not recalling a road. They are recognising one.

That is the gap between memorising and understanding. A list of turns works on one route and breaks on the next. A good comparison travels. Once you see that the new thing is mostly like something you already know, with one part different, you only have to learn the part that is different.

Most of us treat that as a gift some people are born with. I think it is closer to a muscle. Anyone can practise noticing what an unfamiliar situation resembles, and checking exactly where the resemblance stops.

Life keeps handing us roads we have never driven. The people who cope are rarely the ones with the longest list. They are the ones who keep asking what this is like.