Read that headline again. It’s wrought unimaginable havoc on my life.
I have this awful habit of assuming that everyone gets it — or at least draws the same conclusion from things that I do. I realized it today. I was outlining a proposal for improving something that, in its present state, is kind of hard to maintain. I wrote the outline heading “Hard to maintain,” and kept right on going to the next outline item. And then, to the cartoon-SFX sound of screeching brakes, I stopped and went back. The following internal conversation* took place:
“Shouldn’t you tell them why ‘hard to maintain’ is bad?”
“Why? Isn’t it obvious? It’s obvious to me.”
“No, it’s not. Hard to maintain means it’s more expensive to keep things up to date. It means that, when the system changes, reality falls out of sync with your description of it. Consistency flies south, and poops on your head as it passes over. It might help to point these things out.”
“Oh. Yeah. OK.”
…and I filled in some more details. I got lucky this time — too many times in my life, I’ve left “self-evident” points to stand on their own, to the confusion of whoever was trying to follow my argument. The writers of the Declaration of Independence had the good sense to enumerate the principles they held self-evident. Otherwise, the interpretation might have been left to King George, whose notion of self-evident truths probably had lots to do with the divine right of kings, tribute from the colonies, and a nice cup of tea.
This is one of the nice things about getting some life experience — you (if you’re me) finally start to take notice of patterns that might not be very helpful. And you can do something about it. Not a bad day’s work.
* Let’s not go into the whole talking-to-yourself thing right now, OK?
