Summary

The article outlines a method for understanding seemingly impossible concepts by gradually expanding one's frame of reference, accepting initial misunderstandings, and embracing a growth mindset.

Abstract

The author discusses the challenge of comprehending concepts that seem impossible, such as women's intuition, eternity, or God, and presents a three-step approach to tackle this issue. The first step is to stop trying to understand the entire concept at once and instead break it down into comprehensible parts, using familiar references to build a scaffold of understanding. The second step acknowledges that initial understanding will be distorted due to the limitations of one's current knowledge, similar to having blurry vision that sharpens as one gets closer to the subject. The final step emphasizes that making concessions in understanding is not a failure but a natural part of the learning process, as individuals are constantly changing and growing. The author suggests that with patience and persistence, one can grasp even the most challenging concepts over time.

Opinions

The author views their wife's intuition as a form of "magic" due to its seemingly instantaneous nature, contrasting it with their own trial-and-error approach to problem-solving.
The author believes that understanding complex subjects requires a compromise between what the subject is and what one is currently capable of grasping.
It is implied that a person's frame of reference is not fixed and can be expanded through exploration and experience.
The author suggests that an initial low-resolution understanding of a concept is a natural and acceptable starting point, which will improve over time.
The article promotes the idea that the mind has an unlimited potential to grow and adapt, which is essential for comprehending new and difficult ideas.
The author references Carol Dweck's concept of "The Growth Mindset" as a key to personal development and the ability to believe in "impossible things."

How to Think About Impossible Things in 3 Easy Steps

Everything’s impossible, until you do it.

My wife’s intuition is crazy fast and dead accurate, but to me it just feels like magic. “How do you know that?” I ask. Her usual reply, “I just do” explains nothing.

I am a non-intuitive being. All I know comes solely from the stumbling path of trial and error, all stubbed toes, bruised shins, and cut fingers. To me, her instant insight doesn’t seem merely impossible, it is impossible. Still, there must be an explanation.

Have you ever tried to understand something inconceivable? Explaining women’s intuition is just one example, but of course, there are others. Describing eternity to people limited by time; explaining women — in their totality — to men; making God clear to science.

How can you do this? Each subject seems to defy the person trying to comprehend it. Is there a way for the limited to decipher the unlimited?

Of course there’s a way.

It’s just hiding around the next corner of reality. Once you know the trick though, it’s easy.

Step 1: Stop trying to understand the whole thing at once

You have an existing frame of reference you use to approach life. It’s a combination of your accumulated body of experience and knowledge, together with your willingness to extend faith beyond the boundaries of what you know.

To think about something completely outside your frame, you need to compromise between what the subject is, and what you’re currently able to understand. You need to make a concession to your present limited framework. If you don’t, there aren’t many ways left to engage with the new subject.

My wife’s intuition is fast. It comes to her all-at-once, kind of like a mini flash-of-inspiration. I’ve had this occasionally, sometimes when trying to visualize a solution to some handyman problem like carpentry or under-sink plumbing.

For me, it only happens after testing all kinds of other connections and configurations that don’t work. The trial-and-error process feeds my brain enough so I can suddenly conceive a solution. Seems like she gets to skip all that somehow.

This describing the unknown in terms of the known isn’t conceding defeat, it isn’t saying you don’t understand at all.

Instead, you’re building a scaffolding of comprehension.

You’re moving all around the unknown thing so you can look at it from different angles, inspect all the parts of it big and small, and really see how it’s put together. Later, after you’ve looked at all the pieces and how they relate, after you’ve expanded your frame of reference, you can discard this scaffolding.

For now, understand what you can, in ways that make sense to you.

Step 2: Understand that your concession creates some distortion in meaning

At first, you’re not going to understand the thing clearly. Unless of course you’re bestowed with the gift of intuition (and to those so endowed, I say, “lucky bastard!”).

For the rest of us, everything is blurry at first. We must use low-resolution concepts until we obtain higher-resolution ones.

I am nearsighted. My wife is farsighted. Nothing comes into focus for her unless it’s at least 6 feet away while 8 inches is my perfect focal distance. She thinks I’m blind, even with glasses.

“How can you drive?!” she agonizes, “Can you even see the other cars out there?!”. The answers, of course, are simple.

Before I got my first pair of glasses at age 11, the world was a terrifying blur. I didn’t know what anything was unless it was close enough to taste. But over time I developed a method of navigation.

I would memorize the shape of blurry things. I would memorize how those blurs moved or didn’t. I would use my fuzzy, low-resolution vision to navigate closer to something, committing to memory higher-resolution snapshots along the way. When I was close enough to smell it, I could see its details like a microscope.

It’s OK for things to be blurry and distorted at first. Actually, it’s quite a natural process. As your frame of reference changes, your comprehension will come into focus.

Be patient with yourself and your level of understanding. Let the action of time — change and growth — do its work.

Step 3: Making concessions doesn’t mean you’ve failed to understand

Given the new conceptual hurdle you’re trying to surmount, your present experience, concepts, or descriptive language might seem like a handicap. And honestly, they might be.

But, and here is the great “but”, you change and grow every moment.

Who you were in the morning is not who you are right now. Your ability to comprehend increases with each new experience, each new word you gain.

You are not a static being.

Your mind has an effectively unlimited potential to grow its ability to see from new perspectives, to understand, to make sense of things. Keep this in mind. Learning is quite literally your superpower.

By the way, Carol Dweck, an American psychologist, has written quite a bit about your potential to grow and change. She calls it “The Growth Mindset” and you can find her books all over.

If the new idea is fuzzy at first, keep working at it. Stay willing to examine it, think about it, play with it. Just because the concept is new and strange now doesn’t mean you’ve failed, it doesn’t mean you never “get it”. You will.

Like all things that really matter and have deep meaning, it takes time and persistence.

Keep an attitude of growth. There is always another level of meaning waiting for you.

You’re going to run into impossible things every day.

Just ask Alice in Wonderland.

“One can’t believe impossible things,” she said to the White Queen. The Queen observed that Alice simply lacked discipline and practice, boasting that she sometimes believed “as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

And you can too. Leverage these steps to help (before breakfast)

Look at the new subject piece by piece, not all at once.
Explain it to yourself using your current frame of reference.
Keep a mindset of growth. In time, you will gain even the impossible.

My wife’s intuition is still a bit of a mystery to me (hell, ALL women’s intuition is a mystery to me).

I partially explain it as the spirit of quick understanding, a spirit to which I have only meager access.

I don’t know by what beautiful magic it came nor how it works.

But someday I will.