“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
One of the qualities that I have been working on in myself is to have the clarity necessary to speak deep truths in a simple way. Understanding is wonderful but if I can’t convey what I understand in a simple way to others than it is next to useless. What’s more if I can’t explain it simply do I fully understand or am I just intellectualizing? In these days of internet connection, knowledge is easy to come by, understanding much less so. It is the difference between having a warehouse full of food and feeding people.
Blessings, G
“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
I find myself of late having little patience with jargon. Don’t get me wrong, when speaking of technical things with others in your area of expertise then use what words you have available. However if you wish to communicate then use language that everyone present understands. Far too often I hear people using terms that only those ‘in the know’ can understand. What they communicate is not so much information about whatever subject they are discussing as information abou the way they see themselves. Which may be fascinating if that is the topic at hand but rarely is.
It is possible to convey the deepest of thoughts with the simplest of words. “Who is the Master who makes the grass green?”, “Light acts like a particle and a wave at the same time”,”Shared joy is increased, shared pain lessened.” Albert Einstein said famously “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, then you don’t understand it yourself” Yet, still in every field of endeavour you find people using the vocabulary of their field in order to hid rather than illuminate. Of these bricks, babel is made.
Blessings, G
“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies… It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.”
— Albert Einstein
I’m keeping it simple tonight. For one I’m fairly tired and I’m packing for a trip that starts in a few days, I am also in the midst of trying to balance the different aspects of my life and finding it a bit challenging tonight. Nothing that can’t be sorted out fairly easily. I just need a bit of a wider perspective.
It seems to me that as far as philosophies go, keep it simple is not a bad one. Far too often it seems we feel the need to explain everything and most of it of course becomes guesswork. We extrapolate the things we don’t know from the things we do and create large monolithic structures. I’d rather these days be open to all possibilities, hold onto the things I know for sure and sit with the unknowns. That way, only the highest quality ‘meat’ with no filler exists within a rather simple foil wrapper.
Blessings, G
“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty…….. but
when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is
wrong.”
― Richard Buckminster Fuller
When a solution is found that not only solves the problem but does so in an efficient way we call it elegant. Elegance is a type of beauty that involves both simplicity, efficiency and grace. In our lives, we encounter many varieties of problems. So often we settle on make shift quick fixes that appear rough and unfinished. Oh they last for a while but if we don’t find a way to integrate them fully in an elegant manner than the problems will reassert themselves. Therefore for a solution to be fully workable it must have that elegance.
Blessings, G
Window on a New World by G A Rosenberg 
Echoes by G A Rosenberg 
Down the Rings by G A Rosenberg 
