E6: Oops!; S7: When the Fat Lady Sings

Oops! I did is again!I spent a good portion of this episode attempting to answer a question.Or perhaps attempting to construct a question.Or perhaps attempting to demonstrate how questions are constructed.It’s difficult to say.Fortunately, saying things has never been a major focus of this podcast.People often imagine that understanding arrives through explanation.Someone learns a fact.Someone receives new information.Someone acquires a framework.A diagram appears.An arrow points to another arrow.A podcast host clears his throat and begins a sentence with:“Actually…”And then everything changes.Or so we’re told.I am increasingly suspicious of this arrangement.Not because explanations are useless.Because they are often excellent.Beautiful, even.I love explanations.I collect them.I stack them in little piles around my apartment (with twenty foot ceilings).Sometimes I pet them.But every once in a while I notice that explanations and transformations seem to be only distant relatives.You can explain something for years.You can explain it correctly.You can explain it with charts.You can explain it with studies.You can explain it with citations.You can explain it with a laser pointer and a PowerPoint presentation and matching polo shirts.And somehow the thing remains exactly where it was.Waiting.Unimpressed.There is a moment in childhood when you begin discovering that adults are making a lot of this up as they go.Not necessarily the important parts.Just… most of it.The explanations.The narratives.The confidence.The certainty.The polished way they deliver conclusions they accidentally assembled from scraps and weather and luck and whatever happened to be lying around at the time.This realization can be disappointing.It can also be extremely funny.One of the stranger things about living among human beings is watching us transform observations into philosophies.A thing happens.Then another thing happens.Then a third thing happens.By Thursday somebody has a podcast.By Friday somebody has a movement.By Saturday somebody has merchandise.By Sunday somebody is standing on a mountain carrying tablets.The process is remarkable.Efficient, too.Almost industrial.I have noticed that many of my favourite conversations begin drifting away from their original topic.Not because people are distracted.Because the original topic wasn’t the topic.It was a doorway.You start by discussing one thing.Then another thing wanders into the room.Then another.Eventually everyone realizes they’ve arrived somewhere entirely different.The best conversations often feel less like navigation and more like being carried downstream by a river that has no respect whatsoever for your itinerary.This episode contains observations.Some of them may even be true.Others may simply be passing through.I encourage listeners to approach them with the same level of caution they would apply to a squirrel attempting to sell financial products.Season Seven is called When the Fat Lady Sings.The episode is called Oops!I will not be elaborating.As always, thank you for listening.Or not listening.Both remain available options.I am a strong supporter of personal freedom.At least until someone disagrees with me.