My elder son Danish came home from school talking about Newton. He wanted to understand the three laws of motion. I gave him the correct answer — I just gave it in the wrong order. I gave him the feeling first. The formula came later, in a textbook he could read on his own. And I think that is exactly how it should work.
It started the way most good conversations do — casually, without announcement. We were just talking. And then he asked if I knew who Isaac Newton was.
The Laws Were Always About Life
Here is the thing about Newton's laws that no physics textbook will tell you: the underlying logic was never just about apples and planets. It was always about how things move, what stops them, and what happens when they meet resistance. That is physics. It is also life.
I was not trying to replace Newton. I was trying to give Danish something to attach the formulas to. When he opens the textbook and reads "a body at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by an external force" — he will not see an abstract sentence. He will hear a question he has already asked himself: what keeps me going when things get hard?
That is the only thing the life version of the law does. It builds the hook. The textbook fills in the rest.
He Asked If He Should Write It in His Test
When Danish asked "Should I write it this way in my test?" — I almost laughed out loud. Not at him. At how perfectly the question revealed that he had actually been listening.
A child who is not engaged does not ask follow-up questions. A child who thinks you are talking nonsense does not consider whether your version is test-worthy. Danish's question meant: I found this interesting enough to want to use it. That is the only feedback a parent ever needs.
But the question also had a trap in it. If I had said yes — write it however you understand it — I would have been setting him up to fail the test and, more importantly, to distrust this kind of conversation in the future. The punchline had to land cleanly: No, you will fail the test. This was for your understanding.
The distinction matters. I was not teaching him to ignore what the book says. I was teaching him that there are two kinds of knowledge — the knowledge you carry in your body, and the knowledge you write in an exam. Both are real. Both have their place. They are just not the same place.
Formula Without Feeling Is Just Memorisation
I have watched this dynamic play out in engineering teams too. A new engineer joins, is handed documentation, is told the process — and two months later, they can recite the rules perfectly but cannot make a judgment call on their own. Because rules without context are just constraints. They do not teach you to think; they teach you to comply.
The engineers I have worked with who grew the fastest were not the ones given the most documentation. They were the ones given a feeling for why the rules existed — and then trusted to read the rules themselves.
Give them the feeling before the formula. The formula will stick because the feeling already did.
This works because of how understanding actually forms. We do not learn by receiving accurate information. We learn by connecting new information to something we already feel. The feeling is the anchor. Without it, even the most precisely worded explanation slides off.
The Order Is Not Optional
Formula first, feeling later — this is how most formal education works, and it is why so much of it is forgotten within a year of the exam. Feeling first, formula to follow — this is how curious people learn, and it is why they remember. The sequence is not a stylistic choice. It is the difference between understanding and memorisation.
Danish will forget the exact words of that conversation. He is a child — he will forget most of what I say. But somewhere in the background, a small thing was installed that evening: the idea that abstract ideas have human shapes, and that it is worth looking for them.
When he sits in a physics class years from now and a teacher writes F = ma on a board, he may not remember me at all. But maybe — just maybe — he will pause before writing the formula down, and ask himself what it actually means. Not for the test. For himself.
That is what I was really teaching him. Newton was just the excuse.