Three words can be powerful. “I love you,” “Be here now,” and “Just do it” jump to mind. But there’s a three-word phrase that holds a special place in my heart, because it was a gift from my grandmother.
We called her Grandma Honey. Throughout our childhood, she would take us on adventures to the symphony, a magic show, a museum, or a special event. Sometimes we thought these things were boring, but they always came with a small gift or treat, so it never felt like a chore. She believed in manners— “What do you say?” she’d always prompt, and we’d answer with a please or thank you. Every few visits we’d go to the library and pick out a few books, which were arranged by grade level. At one point, when I was probably 6 or 7, she urged me to start picking books from older grades because “those books are too simple for you. You’re a better reader than that.” Reading my “big kid” book at her house, I’d inevitably come across a mysterious word I didn’t understand. That’s when my grandmother would deliver her greatest three-word gift: “Look it up.” The lesson was delivered at every available opportunity. I know it was a lesson she believed in, but I think it’s possible that she didn’t realize how deep the lesson would go. “Look it up,” she’d say, and I would march a processional to the dictionary, which lay atop an oak pedestal like sacred scripture. I would open the book ceremoniously, lift the front cover and several pages like a heavy door, and peer inside. As I looked for my mysterious word, my eyes would glimpse other fascinating words and small illustrations. Sometimes one would catch my eye and make me linger. They were like magic spells. Once I found my mystery word and read the definition, some small, previously invisible piece of the world was revealed. Sometimes times the definition would create another mystery, and I’d hold my place with one hand while I paged through with the other to look up another word. “Look it up” became a mantra. My parents knew a good idea when they heard it, and began to take up the chant. When an unfamiliar word appeared in adult conversations and I asked what it meant, they’d dutifully recite “look it up.” They intoned “look it up” when I didn’t understand something in my homework, and even when a word appeared in a movie or television show. Before long, I began to go to the dictionary without prompting. “Look it up” did much more than just build a good vocabulary. It taught me valuable lessons about life and learning, about complexity, and about beauty. As a tribute to my grandmother, as well as to my favorite book, I’d like to share a few of those lessons. It’s okay not to know something Opening a dictionary is an act of asserting control over your own ignorance and admitting “I don’t know”. When I was younger, Grandma Honey would regularly pepper me with questions. “Why do you think an apple has seeds in it?” she’d ask, or “Why does the moon look different each day?” and I’d answer “I’m not sure” or “I think maybe…” One day she told me “You know, it’s okay to say ‘I don’t know.’” And she was right, of course. All human science and discovery has resulted from a smart person admitting “I don’t know; let’s find out.” On the other hand, certainty gives rise to religious zealotry, political partisanship, war, and persecution. Before we can look something up, we have to admit that we don’t know. That’s a powerful admission, and one that we should all practice regularly. Action, Initiative, and the importance of small wins “I don’t know” is the first impulse to action, to finding out. But looking up a word goes further. You take responsibility, and you act. You start with “I don’t know”, and through a small, simple action, you begin to know. You don’t just let the river of life carry you downstream; you dip your oars into the water. If you only dip them once, if you only look up one word, it won’t do much. But when you make it a habit, you can start to move upstream and take responsibility for your own education. Much of life works the same way. Saving a dollar doesn’t do much for your finances, but the habit of saving and investing can make you a millionaire. Practicing a scale won’t make you a virtuoso, but the habit of practicing can. A single vote won’t change an election, but habitual civic engagement changes the world. Little actions add up. I didn’t understand what my grandmother was teaching me at the time, but now I do: she was teaching me to take action—whether it was to learn, to affect the world, or to lend a helping hand. I believe that Weston Noble, the former director of the Luther College Nordic Choir, was making a similar statement when he picked up trash around campus. Nobody can save the whole world, but we can each make little pieces of it better every day. Little actions have even more power when they set examples for people around us. When I began my teaching career, I followed Mr. Noble’s example and picked up trash whenever I saw it around campus. Years later, I received a message from a former student who had become a teacher: she had just received an award for picking up trash and setting a good example on her campus, and she credited me with the example. I smiled and told her about Mr. Noble, and wondered whether he, too, had been following someone’s example. “Look it up” may not be as visible as picking up trash, but it still sets an example. I believe that our public figures, particularly our elected officials, have a responsibility to demonstrate a healthy vocabulary and to show that they are committed to a nuanced understanding of the world. Unfortunately, far too many of them are rewarded for “dumbing down” their arguments. Curiosity “The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind,” says Edmund Burke, “is curiosity.” That may be true, but that curiosity is only a seed, and it needs to be nurtured if it is to grow. Grandma Honey’s admonition to “look it up” taught me to tend my curiosity plant, to nourish it with discovery. Every new word was sunlight and water that fed my curiosity. To look up a word is to engage in a tiny bit of research. We zealously teach children to read, but after they gain the most basic vocabulary, we seem to give up. We need to realize that literacy is a lifelong process that doesn’t stop. “Look it up” is research for all ages. It’s a carnival of the intellect and imagination. A kindergartener can handle it, yet it still reveals delights to the oldest scholar. I’ve followed my curiosity in the standard routes, to learn “subjects” like music, history, and science. But through a trained mind, I’ve also explored how to get better at relationships, I’ve discovered surprising truths about the workings of the human mind, I’ve learned to shape parts of my own consciousness, and I’ve discovered ways to have a whole lot more fun. The internet is a cornucopia of information. Want to get better at interviewing? Look it up. Need help brainstorming ideas for a date? Look it up. Want to stop feeling overwhelmed? Look it up. Research is how you make your curiosity actionable, and you will get better at it with practice. Research needn’t be a formal, stuffy process, though. Something as simple as “I wonder what’s over there” has led me to an enjoyable afternoon exploring abandoned WWII turrets in the Marin Headlands north of San Francisco. Another time, during a trip to Yosemite, I found myself wondering what it was like to hike that 211-mile trail. That led me to plan a hike of the John Muir Trail and opened up a new hobby. Curious people have an open secret: research is fun. Nowadays, my biggest struggle is to discard interesting projects so that I can explore my deepest passions more fully. “What can I learn next?” has been replaced by “What should I delete so I can have more time to learn X?” I’m more likely to be overwhelmed by the number of subjects I want to explore than by the difficulty of any one task. Grandma Honey followed her curiosity everywhere. She was a docent at the LA Zoo; she and my grandfather travelled extensively and explored far beyond the resorts that they could have afforded; she volunteered at the library and with a women’s shelter; she loved Scrabble and crossword puzzles and reading books with a cup of tea. I’m so grateful for the example she set. Self-improvement Opening a dictionary is an exercise in self-improvement. Before you didn’t know something, now you do. Already, you are better than you used to be. What could be more motivating than that? “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man,” said Ernest Hemingway; “true nobility is being superior to your former self.” Carol Dweck is a psychologist at Stanford University who has studied the effect of praise on children. Her research has shown that the beliefs people hold about talents and skills determine how quickly they grow those talents. For example, someone who believes that intelligence is innate has no reason to work hard, and will even be afraid to admit they don’t know something. She calls this a “fixed” mindset. On the other hand, someone who believes that intelligence can grow over time will take on new challenges and will see failures as learning opportunities. Dweck calls this a “growth” mindset. Every time Grandma Honey said “look it up,” she was helping me pull up the weeds of a fixed mindset and plant the seeds of a growth mindset in their place. No praise, no scolding, just “look it up”. Nobody needed to tell me that I could make myself smarter, I had the proof. A belief in objective truth and complexity A vague word has a vague meaning, and can be interpreted many ways. But a specific, well-chosen word doesn’t have that problem. Research suggests that our vocabulary shapes the way we represent the world. Put another way, when you know more words, you see the world more clearly. George Orwell warned that “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” It’s no mistake that a central feature of 1984 was doublespeak: Orwell knew that when we are loose with language, we allow our thoughts and morals to be ambiguous too. Mohandas Gandhi observed that “Morality is the basis of things, and truth is the basis of all morality.” Beware those who use ambiguous language; they may be obscuring the truth. Beware, too, people who are careless with grammar or rely on a limited vocabulary: their concept of the world is likely to be overly simplistic. People who simplify a complicated world into constructs like good vs. evil and us vs. them are likely to hold deep prejudices. People with a large vocabulary aren’t guaranteed to have a complex worldview, but a limited vocabulary limits the possibilities of complexity. You can watch this play out every day on Facebook. You could see Grandma Honey’s rich concept of the world in the way she interacted with others and challenged our prejudices. I remember when we visited the La Brea Tar Pits and my sister and I wanted ice cream from the Mexican ice cream vendor nearby. Grandma Honey stunned me by carrying on a long conversation with him in Spanish. Not only had I not realized that she spoke fluent Spanish, I was surprised at how much respect she showed this poor street vendor. It was my first experience confronting a prejudice in myself; I held assumptions about his education, intelligence, and class, without any basis. They were assumptions I hadn’t realized I had, and they were based in simplistic subjectivity. That lesson has stuck with me, and I believe my reach for complexity and objectivity has led me to greater compassion. Elegance and Beauty Since a rich vocabulary increases our ability to perceive the world with nuance and subtlety, it naturally follows that we can begin to experience deeper levels of beauty. The practice of perceiving the nuances between two similar words affects cognition. With practice, your cognitive ability begins to grow. Eskimos have seventeen words for snow because they perceive seventeen useful distinctions between the varieties of snow. But it works the other way, too—every time an Eskimo describes snow, he is forced to differentiate between fine distinctions in order to choose the right word. He is practicing his percipience every time he talks about snow, and he gets better over time. This is why musicians are disgusted, sometimes to the point of physical revulsion, over musical performances that others find pleasant. The musical language is complex and I don’t wish to oversimplify, but take one example to prove the general point: when a musician tries to play in tune, they perceive extremely subtle differences in pitch. A young musician might play a sharp when the note is supposed to be a natural, and she may not even realize her mistake. As she continues to play, she’ll begin to play the right notes, but not realize she is out of tune. Eventually, she plays mostly in tune, but it will take many years for her to tune at a professional level. The point is, she can’t get to this point by simply listening harder—she must develop her intonation “vocabulary” through “speaking” the language, which changes the neural pathways in her brain and allows her to hear subtleties of pitch. Once she hears those subtleties, there is no going back—music that once sounded okay now sounds harsh and unpleasant. K. Anders Ericsson is a Psychologist who studies the development of expert ability. He has identified “mental models” or “domain knowledge” as one of the differentiating characteristics of experts. These mental models allow experts to consume large amounts of information more quickly and to make sense of it faster than a non-expert. It’s the reason a martial arts expert seems to have lightning-fast reflexes, why a major-league slugger can hit a fastball, and why we don’t consciously think of individual letters when we type on a keyboard. To increase your vocabulary is to expand your mental model of the world. As you practice discrimination, you deepen your ability to see the elegance and beauty in the world. Most of the world spends their time seeking more excitement and constantly higher highs, a fool’s errand that leads to risky behavior, and eventually, a sense of meaninglessness. A person who develops a rich mental model can experience deeper joys within what is already there. After “very very very happy”, to just be “happy” is a disappointment. But to go from “ecstatic" to “peaceful” involves no loss of happiness, just a change in type. While most of the world jerks their dopamine lever compulsively, a person who appreciates nuance can go deeper and appreciate the experience that is already here. It took me over 20 years to appreciate Mozart’s music. It was always pleasant, but now it can make me weep. That’s the power of deeper levels of nuance. Grandma Honey knew the power of words. I don’t know if she appreciated the immensity of the gift she gave me, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Near the end of her life, her mind was destroyed by Alzheimer’s, and her only words were “Yes,” “No,” and “Carroll” (my grandfather’s name). It filled us all with anguish to see our fiercely independent matriarch reduced to a vocabulary of three words. But I believe that her rich vocabulary, her puissance, and her initiative allowed her to squeeze more experience from her life than most. And besides, three words can be powerful.
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Years ago, I took up meditation as a way to reduce stress. Within a few weeks, I noticed a marked improvement in my stress, but I noticed some welcome side effects: I was grumpy less often, I found it easier to connect with people, and--very unexpectedly--I fell completely, head-over-heels in love with classical music all over again. It was actually all music that got better, but classical music in particular took on a whole new level of depth and enjoyment.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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