Follow The White Rabbit

I believe that the foundations of wisdom are knowledge and understanding.  You can have all the knowledge in the world, but without a deeper understanding that ties those facts together you can't have wisdom.  If you have lots of understanding, but lack the knowledge of the underlying principles behind that understanding, you still lack wisdom.  A fool can have facts and figures, charts, tables, and all of the knowledge in the world, but without understanding, he remains a fool.  I hate to sound a fool.  Therefore when I talk I try to impart both knowledge and understanding so that wisdom may be shared.

Without the shared basic level of understanding and knowledge from which a topic is drawn, wisdom can never be attained, nor shared.  Therefore, frequent side tracking must occur in the discussion to bring in additional side points, examples, and related knowledge to fully understand a concept.  Additionally, my personal thought association, not so much a train as a terminal, leads to explanations that often require running through the brush and associated disorder along a rabbit trail.


Maybe it is impossible for me to sit down and explain something in a logical progression from point A to point B.  Odd for a girl who loves straight lines so much I worked out the straightest path to walk between my school and my house, even when it meant taking a long diagonal across a street.  Still, it is blindly apparent that I am incapable of direct, linear communication.


When I think, a web of associations and word relations is drawn in such a way that a million associated bits of knowledge and understanding are drawn together in a very rapid succession.  There is no possible way my mouth or my hands can communicate the structured concepts spewing forth, forget all the detritus of half ideas, incomplete tangents, and good but eventually out voiced dominate thought.  Sometimes it's like a million researchers pitching their findings simultaneously in an open market.  Each yelling louder, showing the thoughts that may form from it, the other associations that could therefore be made, if only you take this one, not that.  Each phrase I type can be followed, or replaced by a million similar ideas as they flood through the forefront of my thought.

It is easy to begin to understand the fundamentals of a person's thoughts by having them link common words together.  Making lists of everything they associate quickly with a given word.  Even with the fastest of writing or typing my lists still are edited as so many words quickly fly through.  As I write this I have mentally made a list of all the words/concepts I associate with the word bottle, the first of which is calf, not too far down the list is adenosine triphosphate, which of course is associated with Krebs, tests, garbage bags, roommates, massage, and the smell of lilac and rosewood.

Then of course there is the need for clarification, where I drop into example after example.  One example to explain the concept a further example to explain a concept within the example and so on and so forth, to the point that within the passing of an hour one can only hope that I have returned to the main discussion and forwarded it to such a point as to which a direction of position and a prediction of intent can be ascertained.  This is compounded in the instances where it seems that the listener has little comprehension of the topic that is to be discussed in the first place.  Sometimes the initial point isn't made at all!

And with all the lists screaming through in partial awareness while on the sidetrack of the sidetrack of the explanation through the backtrack to the further clarification of the point in the example of the example of the definition, so many words and associations, smells, feelings, experiences, great stories, and metaphor - oh I love a good metaphor - detract in such a way that the train of thought which holds the key to the destination becomes obscured and only by beating through the bush and returning through the trails switching back through the mountains may it be maintained and imparted.

For this purpose I attempt to write these posts as a continuous thought, however my life does not always allow this.  When an idea which I wish to expand upon explodes into the forefront of my consciousness, I hope that I am able to type, otherwise so much is lost to the ether.  If I am able to type I hope that I am able to follow a thought fully through without diverging so far from my destined path as to feel the need to abandon the concepts to return to edit.  I strive to minimally edit my thoughts on this blog.  While I do envy the organized presentation of other bloggers, I feel that to formally type would require too much editing and so many ideas would be lost and the goal here is to get them out so that they stay out and do not cycle back.

Even with this lackadaisical approach some ramblings simply drift too far astray to be publishable, so they are saved for later review.  I have a great discussion about football (well sports in general) that has had this happen and I do hope I can address it soon, maybe even this week, but I fear this week will focus on communication and the sports will continue to wait.  Therefore, some blogs don't make it and occasionally have been recovered through editing.

Next come the interruptions.  My life is full of interruptions.  I'm nursing a baby, can't type while I'm holding him.  He likes to eat while I'm typing, must be the sounds of the keys that make him hungry, I don't know.  Then there is just needing to be somewhere else.  Now that my daughters are in school it seems my schedule is much more defined by the bane of all Trudy-ists - the clock! (well and reality, but mostly the clock)  Still I have found nooks and crannies of time to sit and begin, stop, start again, review and continue writing several entries, including one of which I wrote on my husband's netbook on the city bus.  Not a bad feat for a girl that gets motion sick from reading in a moving car.

So read carefully, and beware if you need further explanation, you may get more than you originally bargained for.  I hope you are ready to follow the white rabbit down whatever crazy rabbit hole it may lead.

Oh and if you haven't ever met Trudy, here is a snippet.