So my life kind of….mildly exploded? And, consequently, I haven’t been getting things done. This has, unfortunately, meant that I temporarily abandoned my writing projects, including this blog.
But don’t fret! I am back in action, thanks to my editor and my new business manager (who already deserves a raise after only a month on the job) and am working on not one, but TWO projects! Here’s what you can look forward to:
- A completed E-Book on how to write with vulnerability and authenticity
- Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd (DRUMROLL PLEASE) a fresh new website!
Coming soon to a screen near you.
Wait, it just occurred to me – do kids these days not even understand that reference? I am so sorry if you don’t get it. You missed out on the glory days of previews before every movie. Alas, how this world devolves!
Ahem. Anyway.
To sum up, I am very excited for the things that are coming, and very sorry for abandoning you for two whole weeks with nothing new to read!
But I’ve already wasted so many words on an introduction, so I’ll keep this week’s thoughts brief.
Let me start by asking you this:
How would you describe a rainbow to someone who’d never seen one?
Seriously, try to describe it. I think my attempt would come out something like this:
“Okay, so when it’s raining but the sun is also shining but the rain is in a certain direction (like, maybe East? Or you have to be in the East and the rain is on your left? Honestly, it could be West) then a rainbow appears. Sometimes it’s a whole bright arch and you can see the whole thing, but sometimes it’s just a little bit. It’s, umm, made of colors? Seven colors, always the same. ROY G BIV. Oh, umm, that stands for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. Which is something you just have to memorize, you can’t tell it’s exactly those colors. And I actually don’t know what Indigo looks like. Like if you gave me a color wheel, I don’t think I could pick it? I guess maybe I could if I imagined a rainbow, but the colors sort of blur together in a real rainbow, because they’re just light. It’s light in the sky. But colors. Wow, this is hard. It has something to do with the sunlight going through the rain. And sometimes there are two arches, but they’re separated and the second one is usually pretty…squidgy? But either way, it’s a color arch made of light that looks like it’s touching the horizon but it’s actually not. And it’s pretty. And rare. And short. Like time short not space short. It’s big and short. Oh my gosh, I don’t know, it’s just like colors in the sky, okay?!”
Now, perhaps some of you were able to whip out your 6th-grade science knowledge and perfectly describe a rainbow on the first try. But, as should be evident from the paragraph above, I failed Earth Science. (I believe my mother failed me on purpose to prove a point, and I probably deserved it, but honestly, I’m not sure what that point was and we’ll probably never know because I’m guessing she doesn’t even remember teaching me Earth Science, let alone how she graded me because of my philosophical and moral failings.) Which means I don’t have the tools to express exactly what a rainbow is.
Nor do I have the knowledge to understand what it would be like to have never seen a rainbow. Does that mean the person has never seen one painted anywhere? Never noticed a weird lens flare in a movie? When I say, “It’s colors in the sky,” what do they see?
Yes, I’m going somewhere with this.
If you don’t know something, and I don’t know what it’s like not to know that thing, we can end up in an endless spiral of me saying words that don’t help you at all. And vice versa. I can be trying to help, trying to improve your life or increase our shared experiences, but just saying words that confuse (or worse, hurt) you more.
And I recognize that this sounds a bit depressing: even the best intentions can still be harmful. But that’s not the whole story, because there’s this wonderful thing called “Questions.”
Do you know what an arch is? Have you seen a drawing of a rainbow? When I say the word, “rainbow,” what do you imagine?
These kinds of questions allow me to gather information to help us share understanding, even if my Earth Science skills are still terrible. That’s the power of questions, and of shared language, which is a whole other blog post.
What do you think? Have you ever tried to describe something to someone who just wasn’t getting it? How did it go?
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