Facts

I have a note where I keep a list of anything I might enjoy writing about. It has snippets of stories, jokes, sentences from conversations I’d like to rewrite, and interesting facts. The facts are a wide range of stuff I consider interesting.

One entry states, “The Inuit language has hundreds of words for snow.” Hundreds of entries apart, I put, “The Aztec language only has one word for snow, hail, and sleet.” I scrolled through the list of ideas for this week’s note. I put the two ideas together and thought it might turn into something worthwhile. I was very excited—I guess, re-excited because I was previously excited enough about each fact separately that they made the list.

Unsure of the name of the Aztec language, I began to research. Nahuatl survived the Spanish invasion and is still spoken by some people in Mexico. I dug into the translation of rain, sleet, and snow. I found the word for all three: tzetzelihui. I continued to research and I also found separate words for rain, sleet, and snow. This fact was interesting, but somehow less so. I then remembered there is also one English word for rain, sleet, and snow. It is called precipitation.

I was bummed, but thought I could still work on the interesting idea that Inuit has hundreds of words to describe snow. Jumping to the punchline—they don’t. There are not that many more versions than English. They also have phrases like “it is snowing” and “it snowed.” But… so does English. See previous words in quotes.

I remembered guidance from Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She said, “Whenever you hear something or you see something, you have an intense reaction, like, ‘I love it! This is awesome!’ or a really intense negative reaction like ‘I hate this. That’s stupid.’ Those are the moments to stop and interrogate what is going on.” She explained that these big emotional responses we have to ideas are based on deeply held beliefs. These beliefs are our personal story, our bias. That should signal a moment where I must slow down.

These “facts” felt and sounded true. Most importantly, I wanted them to be true, so I didn’t investigate them fully. I often dismiss things I don’t like as untrue and don’t inspect the things I would like to be true.

If something makes me really angry, can I pause long enough to truly understand why? Will I do the same for the ideas I overwhelmingly agree with? Can I find balance in knowing and listening?

Be curious, be kind, be whole, do good things.