A Brief Encounter With a Young Woman in the Park
I just had an encounter with a young woman in the park, late 20's I'd guess, that reinforced the importance of facts. (What, you thought this was going to be something racy?)
One of the first things you need to cultivate in order to use your reason effectively is a desire to know facts. Indeed a love of the truth would be even better. But if you have the desire to make an effort to fact-find, you're on your way to using your brain to your best advantage.
So there I was minding my own business, getting in some exercise when a young woman sitting in her car next to the park calls to me. She wants to know if she can drive into the park on the same path I'm walking on, even though she realizes its a path for walkers, joggers and bikes. She asks because she wants to park her car and she just saw a car drive into the park on that path. I tell her that the guy in the car was most likely a cop who was headed for the mounted police horse stables located in the park; either that, or it was one of the park workers. She figures out that if she drives down the path, she might get a ticket or something, so she naturally asks for directions to the parking lot that so she doesn't use that path.
Now the thing is, she was parked just where it's kind of complicated to get back to where you need to go to get to the parking lot. But, of course I offer my best directions and she's kind of staring through her sunglasses listening. Being a bit complicated, the directions will take a couple minutes to explain - basically it's more than "Go to the corner, go left, then go right." I'm watching her face as I get to maybe the third sentence and I can see that she's getting fidgety. She's being polite, but it's looking like I'm straining her attention span. In fact, I'm sure that once we hit the fourth sentence (and I'm trying to be really clear, you understand, so she doesn't get lost), she's in trouble.
I figure I'll sum up by telling her basically she's got to back-track and get to the end of the park where there's a street parallel to the park that she can go down and which will lead to the parking lot. My thinking here was by giving her a kind of geographical breakdown - a picture if you will - of where she was relative to the lot, that would help clear things up.
No dice.
It's now clear that three sentences was her limit. So she politely thanks me and goes back to what she was doing right before she called to me: staring at her mobile phone.
Lesson: Facts sometimes take up more than three sentences. If you can't stand facts that take more than three sentences to describe or explain, you're not going to very good at using your reason to understand anything. You probably should join this young woman and stare at your mobile phone, or maybe your iPad.
Meanwhile, on the way home, as if to reinforce my brilliant insight, I pass a young mother about 30-something parked on the street near the local school with what looks like her son about 10 years old. She's eating fast food (pizza) while he stares at his mobile phone. Neither one acknowledges the other.
What a world.
One of the first things you need to cultivate in order to use your reason effectively is a desire to know facts. Indeed a love of the truth would be even better. But if you have the desire to make an effort to fact-find, you're on your way to using your brain to your best advantage.
So there I was minding my own business, getting in some exercise when a young woman sitting in her car next to the park calls to me. She wants to know if she can drive into the park on the same path I'm walking on, even though she realizes its a path for walkers, joggers and bikes. She asks because she wants to park her car and she just saw a car drive into the park on that path. I tell her that the guy in the car was most likely a cop who was headed for the mounted police horse stables located in the park; either that, or it was one of the park workers. She figures out that if she drives down the path, she might get a ticket or something, so she naturally asks for directions to the parking lot that so she doesn't use that path.
Now the thing is, she was parked just where it's kind of complicated to get back to where you need to go to get to the parking lot. But, of course I offer my best directions and she's kind of staring through her sunglasses listening. Being a bit complicated, the directions will take a couple minutes to explain - basically it's more than "Go to the corner, go left, then go right." I'm watching her face as I get to maybe the third sentence and I can see that she's getting fidgety. She's being polite, but it's looking like I'm straining her attention span. In fact, I'm sure that once we hit the fourth sentence (and I'm trying to be really clear, you understand, so she doesn't get lost), she's in trouble.
I figure I'll sum up by telling her basically she's got to back-track and get to the end of the park where there's a street parallel to the park that she can go down and which will lead to the parking lot. My thinking here was by giving her a kind of geographical breakdown - a picture if you will - of where she was relative to the lot, that would help clear things up.
No dice.
It's now clear that three sentences was her limit. So she politely thanks me and goes back to what she was doing right before she called to me: staring at her mobile phone.
Lesson: Facts sometimes take up more than three sentences. If you can't stand facts that take more than three sentences to describe or explain, you're not going to very good at using your reason to understand anything. You probably should join this young woman and stare at your mobile phone, or maybe your iPad.
Meanwhile, on the way home, as if to reinforce my brilliant insight, I pass a young mother about 30-something parked on the street near the local school with what looks like her son about 10 years old. She's eating fast food (pizza) while he stares at his mobile phone. Neither one acknowledges the other.
What a world.
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