It’s called the Big Idea–the foundation of any best-selling book, blockbuster movie, or TED Talk. They’re frequently found in rare Ah-ha! moments, when clarity emerges unexpectedly from sustained periods of doubt and frustration. And while the euphoric rush from such flashes is intoxicating, the emotional high is short-lived once the discoverer contemplates the daunting task of explaining it to someone else.
Experienced authors, storytellers, and keynote speakers know that sharing big ideas is harder than discovering them. Why? Because big ideas are built upon personal life experiences, while the messages crafted to represent them must be filtered through a listener’s unique life experiences.
So, how do we convert complex concepts–some which may have taken us years to develop–into works that resonate with large numbers of people? The secret is found in the everyday words we use to describe the human condition: prepositions.
While it’s trendy in today’s world to highlight our differences, we find a universal core under all those layers: all 7.64 billion of us of were born and have evolved into the beings we are today. Although that statement may sound simple, consider that each one of us has impossibly derived the SAME big idea from our billions of experiences. “We are physical beings, bounded and set off from the rest of the world by the surface of our skins, and experience the rest of the world as outside us. Each of us is a container, with a bounding surface and an in-out orientation onto other physical objects that are bounded by their surfaces. Thus, we also view them as containers with an inside and an outside.”1
This notion of inside and outside–or the state of actually being inside or outside–is an extraordinary complex idea. Having shorthand like in and out to describe our physical locations is a life imperative, which is probably why they’re the seventh and forty-third most common words used in the English language.2 We–and I mean all 7.64 billion of us–then bootstrap our understandings of new concepts from our deep connection to these two words.
For example, let’s take a look at the seemingly incongruous concept of being inside and outside simultaneously. We can be inside a warm coat, while outside of our home. This knowledge leads to another concept: transition–the fact that we can move back into our houses and out of our coats…and vice versa.
Everyday experiences teach us something new. We’ve learned that our environment affects us. The “simple” act of walking involves an constant struggle between our wills to remain upright and an invisible force that pulls us downward. Although children don’t fully understand the force of gravity–actually, the world’s best physicists still don’t–we accept it as an inescapable part of the human condition. As a result, when we fall down, we’re expected to get back up.
And so we add up and down to our list of tiny words used to describe life experiences. But up and down carry other connotations. Since the act of falling down is unpleasant and getting up is better, we associate up as good and down as bad. Thus, when we’re asked to describe another complex concept such as mood, we answer with seemingly nonsensical things like, “I’m feeling up today,” or “I’ve been down for a while.” Yet, no matter how illogical it may seem to describe emotional states using orientational words, we get it because we’ve all lived it.
The more experiences we have, the more concepts we need to express. For example, consider the impossibly complex concept of love. We can be in or out of it. Actually, we can fall into or out of it, suggesting that love is some sort of container with an inside and an outside. But that’s not exactly right because we can be in love and still hold love in our hearts…again…simultaneously! And just when we’re comfortable with love being a container, Pat Benatar tells us that love is a surface because Love is a Battlefield.
Love is such a vital yet complex concept, prior generations have written plays, books, songs, and proverbs to describe it.
In addition to being a container and a surface, love appears to be a force because Love makes the world go ’round, Love conquers all, and Love makes the impossible possible. This mysterious container/place/force also seems to have cognitive abilities because Love understands all languages. And while love is a force that can understand, it also has the ability to cloud our judgement as Love makes a good eye squint.
1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 describes love as a best friend who’s patient, kind, humble, respectful, forgiving, truthful, trusting, hopeful and persistent. With all of these definitions as a container/surface/force with friend-like cognitive abilities, it’s a wonder that we have any understanding of what love is at all.
But we do, because the longer we experience the human condition, the more opportunities we have to experience love’s infinite facets.
So, you wanna share a big idea? Start with the words used to describe our relationship to the human condition: prepositions. Prepositions will eventually lead to metaphors–the building blocks of all human understanding.
Do so by asking yourself a few questions about your big idea:
- How might I represent my big idea as an object, substance, container, surface, event, action, activity, or state?
- Does it have an inside, outside, top, or bottom that allows us to be in, out, on, off, over, or under it?
- Does it come with some things and/or without others?
- Is it stationary or does it move? If it moves, does it move toward or away?
- Are there any advantages or disadvantages to being by, at, or near it?
- How is it viewed? Do we look up, down, or sideways at it?
- Is it part of a process, where something happens before or after it?
- Is it the cause of something or the result of something else?
- Did it emerge from something or does something emerge from it?
- Is it adversarial? Perhaps it’s for something and against something else?
When trying to convey a big idea, forget the big words and apply a laser-like focus on the small ones that we as humans rely upon daily. Prepositions lead to metaphors and metaphors lead to universal meaning.
Notes:
1. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphor We Live By (University of Chicago Press, 2003) Kindle e-book location 521/4362
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_common_words_in_English
Photo Credit: A. & C. Kaufmann, and Otto Erdmann. Proposal / original by Otto Erdmann ; chromo-lithographed and published by A. & C. Kaufmann, 366 Broadway, New York. , ca. 1873. New York: Published by A. & C. Kaufmann, 366 Broadway. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/99400105/