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Why is repetition so interesting?
An aphorism by James Geary, author of The World in a Phrase and Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists.
It doesn’t quite make sense. Why is repetition so interesting? Variety delights even as it disperses, but the thrill of the familiar persists. It’s like rehearsing a play; an actor gives depth and freshness to a role only by reciting the same lines over and over again, day after day after day. In the same way, practicing the piano is intensely boring—until you practice long enough. Repeating things makes them easy, and inclines them to give up their secrets. “Everything has been said before,” French author André Gide wrote, “but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.” Perhaps that’s it. Maybe we’re just not paying attention. But it still doesn’t quite make sense. Why is repetition so interesting?
James Geary is the author of The World in a Phrase
Visit his site at jamesgeary.com.
Why is repetition so interesting?
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Borrowing heavily from a David Foster Wallace speech:
"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
[...]
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
'This is water.'
'This is water.'
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out."
Simply and grossly understated, repetition helps us gain awareness.
posted by Kaiserin on 4/30/2009 11:54 am