Slow down to speed up

In a world of fast answers, fast food and fast shipping, I enjoy a peculiar delight when sleuthing around in a fat hard back dictionary for definitions.

Damn it’s slow. I haven’t yet measured the efficiency lost by standing up, walking to the dictionary, picking it up, leafing to the wrong page, finding the right page, scanning with a finger, becoming fascinated by a tangential word, and… finally, at long last, arriving on my target.

Despite the “inconvenience,” I much prefer wandering through words. Often, I’m reminded of the very real limitations my knowledge. For example, I had never even heard of a Minke whale until recently, and I now know what an azimuth, although I may never use it.

The very obvious challenge could be posed… Aren’t knowing random words just useless dreck clogging up my brain? In a way, yes. I accede. More information is not necessarily always better. Yet, in another light, I heartily disagree. Getting just the right word (the “mot juste”), gives a clarity to thinking akin to how a higher resolution tv gives a sharper image.

Steve Jobs is quoted to have said:

“Creativity is just connecting things… When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”

With the goal of creativity in mind, perhaps eschewing the laser focus of an internet dictionary search would provide more food for thought — more mental dots to connect.

I have no expectation that you’ll drop the speed and efficiency of an electronic dictionary’s pin point accuracy in favor of the tedious shuffling of pages. But I do wonder, in the helter-skelter speed of the 21st century:

• To gain perspective, or even just refuel your own mental tank: What’s one way you could ease up on the mental accelerator? God knows, we’ve got to take ownership over own mental rest these days.
• How might you expand your focus? You just might see or experience something that’s just on the edge of awareness that might delight, dazzle or even dismay. Perhaps notice the answer to your question was right beyond where you were previously looking.

I wish you continued awareness, clarity and slowness. 🙏

Originally published at https://themiddlewei.com on November 14, 2020.