A Theory Is Better Than Its Explanation

I’ve been saying this for about fifteen years. Half joke, half insurance policy.

It started in meetings, watching people perform thinking instead of actually doing it. Say something broad, let it hover, nod like it means something, and move on before anyone asks the obvious question. The theory sounds smart. The explanation is where the ‘curiosity’ begins.

I kept the line because it felt true. I kept it longer because nobody ever really stopped me on it. Which, in hindsight, might be the strongest evidence in its favor.

Then someone asked me to explain it.

And now we have a situation.

Because the whole point of the theory is that explanations expose you. And suddenly I owe one. Either I explain it well and prove I’m not who I’ve been quietly diagnosing… or I don’t, and congratulations, I’ve been writing autobiography this whole time.

I’ve thought about that moment more than the fifteen years before it. What it means to carry something that long, mostly untested, and then have one person walk in and turn it into a live experiment.

I’d like to think I held up.

But I can’t shake the feeling the theory was better before I explained it.

I Am,