As a student, I really started to grokk accounting when I started thinking of double-entry accounting as the business application of Newton's law "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Whenever a change happens to one side of the financial statements, an exact and simultaneous change happens to the other side. Aggregated over a period of time, the financial statements both categorize and summarize these various changes.<p>The rule that Assets = Liabilities + Equity is important because Liabilities and Equity can be viewed as opposing forces. Notwithstanding the financial engineering and nuance around debt, liabilities in their purest sense are a balance of how much you've taken beyond what you've earned, while equity is a measurement of how much you've earned beyond what you've taken. The assets show what you have, but L&E show how everything was acquired.<p>As I get older, I've come to appreciate how accounting also serves as a prism through which to view the world, because the financial concepts that apply to billion dollar businesses also apply to small mom-and-pops and individuals. One can think of themselves as a company, of which they are the CEO and sole employee. They earn revenue (from a job), incur expenses, and may have physical assets (homes, cars, computers) or liabilities (student/car/home loans). Every decision that's made is financial in nature, and thinking about decisions as an exchange of money or time helps me prioritize what I do personally and professionally.<p>Accounting is a wonderfully beautiful system and I hope it becomes more common knowledge because it is absolutely fundamental to living in our modern time. The largest governments and businesses are bound by the same rules of accounting, and so are we -- whether we are aware of it or not.