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Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

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#84: Personal sensemaking through etymology

Words are sensemaking tools, a common knowledge base that we count on everyday to communicate with each other and to think quietly inside our heads. However, interpretations evolve in the hands of the collective where every use and misuse carves and re-carves meaning. Etymology is the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed over time. Every once in a while, I’ll look up the etymology of a word to better grasp its evolution and subtle references. These exercises help me make sense of the world by shining a light on the push and pull of culture and society. Sometimes I prefer the older meanings.

I’ll share three words here as a thought experiment: Competition, chaos and professional. See if these help with your personal sensemaking.

First, a quick note:

  • The portions with etymology may be hard to read. They aren’t complete sentences and are interspersed with italicized root words. 
  • This is a good resource to look up roots and meanings of words.

Competition:

  • Current meaning: The activity or condition of competing, an event or contest in which people compete. Interaction between organisms, populations, or species, in which birth, growth and death depend on gaining a share of a limited environmental resource.
  • Related word: Compete, which means to strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same.
  • Etymology: From com- ‘together’ + petere ‘to strive, seek, aim at, rush at’. From Late Latin competere “strive in common, strive after something in company with or together”. In classical Latin “to meet or come together; agree or coincide; to be qualified”. Revived from late 18c. in sense “to strive (alongside another) for the attainment of something”. Use in market sense is from 1840s, in athletics sense attested by 1857.
  • Read more: For competition, and compete
  • Notice: How the meaning evolves from “strive after something together” to >>> “to strive (alongside another) for the attainment of something” to >>>  “to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority” in the economic sense.
  • Reflections: The classical definition makes me think that one can stive towards a goal alongside dedicated others and could potentially move fluidly between competing and collaborating. That if one fails to achieve what they hoped to, they could potentially gain strength from others working towards the same goal. Competition as defined originally orients me towards the goal and task at hand while the current definition seems to focus more on goal attainment so the individual can thrive while limiting others. The goal feels like a means to a self-serving end and when one loses, as we often do, the loss feels existential. Doesn’t the classical definition feel more psychologically strength-inducing? 

Chaos:

  • Current meaning: Complete disorder and confusion.
  • Etymology: Late 14c. “gaping void; empty, immeasurable space,” from Old French or directly from Latin chaos. From Greek khaos “abyss, that which gapes wide open, that which is vast and empty,” from *khnwos, from PIE root *ghieh- “to yawn, gape, be wide open.” Meaning “orderless confusion” in human affairs is from c. 1600. Chaos theory in the modern mathematical sense is attested from c. 1977.
  • Read more: Chaos
  • Notice: How the meaning evolves from “that which is vast and empty” to >>> “orderless confusion”
  • Reflections: Personally, the classical definition of chaos feels like an invitation to step into the gaping void and create something fresh. The mention of the yawn invokes the subtle connection to boredom, which can be a stepping stone to creativity. Compare this to the modern definition that tunes me into my helplessness vs. the sense of agency and creativity.

Professional

  • Current meaning: Engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
  • Etymology: Mid-15c., profeshinalle, in reference to the profession of religious orders (see profession). By 1747 of careers, “pertaining to or appropriate to a profession or calling”, especially of the skilled or learned trades from c. 1793. In sports and amusements, “undertaken or engaged in for money” (opposed to amateur), by 1846.
  • Related words:
    • Profession: “Vows taken upon entering a religious order”, “public declaration”, noun of action…“declare openly”.
    • Profess: “To take a vow” (in a religious order), “avowed,” literally “having declared publicly”, “declare openly, testify voluntarily, acknowledge, make public statement of”. From pro- “forth” + fateri (past participle fassus) “acknowledge, confess”, akin to fari “to speak,”.
    • Amateur: “One who has a taste for some art, study, or pursuit, but does not practice it”, from French amateur “one who loves, lover”.
  • Read more: For professional, profession and profess, amateur
  • Notice: The evolution from “vows taken upon entering”, “declare publicly” and “appropriate for a profession or calling” to >>> one’s main paid occupation
  • Reflections: Three themes jump out at me from the original meaning –
    1. Declaration and taking vows: In the west, people publicly take marriage vows in front of loved ones. The idea is to make your commitments known to self and others so when you falter, you have something to anchor back to. Professionally, vows seem to have been reserved for those practicing religion, medicine or law, i.e. professions with a higher fiduciary duty. But all professions are undertaken in the service of others (vs. amateur, which is mostly for oneself). Vows seem helpful in creating both an internal grounding during times of struggle and a public commitment in how we want to show up in the service of others. We can fashion our vows for our vocation however we want, even if they are said mostly to oneself.
    2. Practice and action: The meaning implies that we will pursue something actively as opposed to passive interest. We move towards what moves us.
    3. Money:  Of course one has to sustain themselves through work but our modern lives push us to make professional decisions primarily on the last-mile transaction of getting paid instead of upstream engagement and commitment. Research shows that people are willing to earn less if they get to do more meaningful work, so it’s clearly not all about the money. The modern definition makes us think so. 

The etymology for all three seems to have one thing in common ― the old definitions felt expansive and humane. They invoked us to step into broader and better parts of ourselves. The current ones feel constrained and transactional. They invoke us to step into fear. Meanings evolve in response to society but society also evolves based on the meanings we create. Reduction happens gradually, with enough repetition, and it impacts our day-to-day. 

We don’t have to go digging into the meaning of every word but if our life is being commandeered by a word, it’s helpful to zoom out and see if it might be more liberating to anchor our thinking to a more expansive definition. 

“In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better.” ― Edward de Bono: Maltese physician, psychologist, author, inventor and philosopher

#81: The compost of work

I find myself constantly documenting and taking notes as I work through new ideas and learnings. When I show up to actually combine these ideas into some sort of an output or hypothesis, I only surface a subset of all that went through my mind and hands. I slice off parts that felt so critical only a few weeks ago and add parts that I wasn’t aware of even a few days ago. I clean, toss, add, and subtract information that always seems fluid. But as I take in new information, I feel the weight of responsibility to honor what came my way. To use as much of the good stuff. I feel guilt when I see the massive amounts of thinking that didn’t make it into the final product. The more I get exposed to, the more I want to respect and bring forth in my work in visible ways. This internal burden to go back and extract every last ounce weighs me down and makes forward momentum harder.

Then I started seeing all that work as compost, and it softened something inside. I imagined the yumminess of a nourishing meal with vegetables of all colors: like a roasted vegetable pasta with feta. I saw the mountain of compost with unused stems and peels in green, red and orange. I saw myself picking up the pile and adding it to a compost bag without an ounce of guilt, safe in the knowledge that all those parts would regenerate soil.

Everyone has inputs that propel their work. These inputs are often someone else’s output, like the vegetables in my pasta example. I can make my meal because farmers offered me their valued output. Could I do it any other way? My using key parts of their vegetables and discarding others is a part of the process of evolution. Of creation. The discarded parts, the stems and peels, sustained the vegetables while they were growing and even when unused by me, they’re still not trash. They hold power to replenish the earth; like the compost of all our past work holds power to replenish our future work.

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” — Isaac Newton, physicist and mathematician

#77: Sustainable is inherently relational

Transaction: An exchange or an interaction between two or more things or entities. It’s a communicative action involving two or more units that reciprocally affect or influence each other.
Examples: Paying back a friend who covered our dinner when we were short on cash, scheduling a meeting on someone’s calendar and them accepting, saying hello to a neighbor and getting a smile in return, negotiating a business deal.
1. Transaction has a broader definition than simply buying and selling. Our lives are dominated by convenient acts of buying and selling, appropriately called transactions, so we may forget that these acts represent a subset of the exchanges humans conduct daily. Transaction is an exchange, an interaction. We transact not only as consumers but also as friends, parents and collaborators. 
2. Transactions require trust. Throughout human history, we transacted with those that we had (varying degrees of) relationships with. Transactions were simply one part or the last mile, so to speak, of an ongoing engagement.
3. It’s only in the recent past that we’ve been able to transact “facelessly” with another. As more and more of the world opens up to us (more people, more internet-enabled tools, more geographies), we’ve leaned into the comfort of anonymity, distance, and low commitment. We exchange ideas, conversations and goods without any of the relational tethering that transactions and exchanges were historically built upon.

Relation: An existing connection or a significant association between two or more entities or objects.
Relational: The way in which these entities or objects are connected. Anything that is connected will have a cause and effect relationship. Push or pull on one object and you’ll create a reverberation within other related objects.
Examples: Collection of related data in a database; relationship between fertilizer, soil, and plant; our relationships with family, friends, colleagues and neighbors.
4. In every transaction, we look for markers of trust while interacting. Reviews, photos, fidelity of those reviews, public upvotes etc. Even when our tools our designed for the last mile of the engagement, i.e. the transactional part, we look for markers that are typically revealed over the course of a relationship.
5. Our businesses, tools and even societies are mostly designed for the last mile transaction, not the upstream relationship. Our workplaces, healthcare systems, communal areas, shopping, dating, communications – everything – is geared for convenience and efficiency so we can cram in even more transactions into our lives. Be productive, do more, be more. 
6. We thrive when transactions nest within a genuine relationship. We crave to know another and to be known by them, to offer our best and be valued for it. This is only possible if we shift our paradigm from seeing people and places as a means to an end to valuing connection as a fundamental end in itself.

Sustainable: Being able to maintain something at a certain rate or level over a period of time. Sustainable implies continuity for a long period of time.
7. Continued thriving in the long-term (i.e. the definition of sustainable), is possible only if we create relational societies, products, services, and mindsets. We can’t sustain joy, contentment and hope by endlessly taking and moving on. An overly transactional life weighs on our psyche. Thriving depends on nesting transactions back under their larger relational contexts, it depends on expanding our perspective to see human and environmental interconnectedness. In the absence of this, it’s easy to keep harming and depleting ourselves and our commons.

The gold-standard in business is to make our lives frictionless, so we can fit even more transactional handshakes in our cramped life, displacing the time we need to create relationships. So we get more and more seamless handshakes with more and more faceless and bodiless entities. Neighbors, coworkers, friends, all reduced to profile pictures, interests and demographic markers to ease the transaction. What nurtures us for the long-haul are the acts of being in relationship, not the endless transactions. We forget that we crave not just the hand but the whole body.  

“I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I will give myself to it.”  ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet and novelist.

#51: The actor. The director. The actor and director.

I like John Krasinski because of how he actively embraces all parts of his creativity, from acting and writing to directing across genres. I admire how he kindles his intent with a mix of humility and courage to bring projects to fruition. He also seems to partner well with other heavy-hitters. I enjoy knowing how he’s evolving, even if I’m not the audience for that work. Since I pay attention when I hear of his new projects, I watched this 10-minute video where he breaks down a scene from his latest movie, A Quiet Place-II.

I was struck by what he said at the 9:33 mark. He explains why acting in a movie he directs is helpful for him as a director. That when he is on set with the actors, he can shape the energy of the scene as he goes; whether it’s whispering encouragement to someone or modulating and cuing their emotions through his own acting. For example, if he needs someone to be more emotional, he can act more emotional and they pick up the cue. He says – “You can weirdly direct through your acting, which is really fun”. Interesting!

Another thing that’s interesting is that a whole movie is built like this, scene by scene. Even when he is the actor engaged in the scene, the director part of him doesn’t leave…it’s right there all along, guiding him and through him the others. Showing up like this in every interaction requires sustained intellectual and emotional presence. John, the director, has a vision of the end goal and clarity around how every scene, resource and actor plays into it. While there is planning, there seems to be a fair bit of improvisation during execution. To do this well, he has to create an environment where all actors are aligned with the overarching vision and in sync with how that vision is brought to life; an environment where they have the psychological safety to bring their full expression to the performance and also improvise with good judgment. Isn’t that exactly what good leadership is?

Good leaders have a north star and a thoughtful execution map, they assemble the resources, the right skills and team; they set the board upon which the game is played. But they also make thoughtful adjustments to shape the team’s trajectory as the play unfolds. In films, not all directors have the benefit of being actors but in business most senior-leaders were once individual contributors, functional specialists, operatives, middle-managers etc. As they progress into leadership roles, they sometimes lose touch with their internal “actor” because of the many high-stakes demands of leadership. But what if there was a way for them to periodically jump in the scene with their team to see first-hand, understand and learn from them? (Without micromanagement of course). Would it help them lead better? Would it make their own journey, in Krasinski’s words, “more fun”?

“Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.”― Claude Bernard

#35: In praise of lived experiences, in aging bodies

  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg became a supreme court justice at age 60 and was crowned as cultural icon “Notorious R.B.G.” at 80, after she delivered a scathing dissent in defense of voting rights. 
  • Maya Angelou directed her first film at 68 and wrote four books during the last ten years of her life, in her late 70s to late 80s.
  • Pablo Picasso produced 347 engravings in one year, at 87. His final works were a mixture of styles and his means of expression kept morphing and growing until the end of his life.
  • Susan B. Anthony was past the age of 80 when she formed the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. In the final six years of her life, she spoke at six NAWSA (American Woman Suffrage) conventions and four congressional hearings, completed the fourth volume of the History of Woman Suffrage, and traveled to eighteen US states and Europe.
  • Benjamin Franklin was 70 when he signed the Declaration of Independence. He did not retire from public service until he was 82.

Many more examples but I’m guessing you get the point. None of these people took their foot off the gas pedal because of ageist messages. In fact, they seem to have done quite the opposite. They produced a torrent of work, became more daring and their works became more expressive with age. The world is better for it. Despite these shiny examples, ageism runs rampant in modern society. Over the last few years we’ve heard a lot about valuing lived experiences but why are they less valued in the workplace when they come in aging and aged bodies? The lack of intergenerational work and collaboration feels like massive waste of wisdom. And this bias feels so arbitrary across disciplines. While some professions like science, humanities and academia seem to value the wisdom of age, others―like business―generally don’t. We’re not discussing physical disciplines here. How can humans appear sharper and more seasoned with age in some intellectual disciplines and not the others?

Just when a person gets comfortable being themselves, just when one taps into their sense of purpose, and just when a person gains enough lived experience to contribute meaningfully, others turn their backs in favor of tight skin and sharp eyesight. We may have it backwards. Our institutions and communities are complex and no single generation can adequately address these issues without the cooperation and contributions from others. We are so fixated on how best to divide the economic pie that we forget we can increase it.

“And as, methinks, shall all,
Both great and small,
That ever lived on earth,
Early or late their birth,
Stranger and foe, one day each other know.”― Henry David Thoreau