Cross Country 92 - Spare is a contronym

[Barrett Dorko]

It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…

Sometimes tours for Cross Country (three cities, three hotels, several airports, countless highways and surface streets and, oh yes, between 50 and 100 therapists) just confuse me. Sure, there are times when a theme recurs and forms the column that week but I’m certain this is the result of what I’ve chosen to notice more than anything else. There seemed to be no theme this past week as I headed south to Tennessee and North Carolina, but I’m committed to writing something so I’m just going to see where the keyboard takes me. I’m hoping a few of you will follow along.

I finally finished Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire ( http://www.amazon.com/Gates-Fire-Novel-Battle-Thermopylae/dp/055338368X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-7285102-7032459?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194788233&sr=1-1), the story of the Spartan's battle with the Persians at Thermopylae. (see 300 ( http://www.300ondvd.com/) for the recent movie version) on the plane to Cincinnati. My son Alex, an Army officer and Ranger recommended it and I’ve learned to respect his opinion of what I should be reading. As usual, I saw him in one of the characters.

In the last few pages a remark regarding the adjective “spartan” was made. It means “nothing extra, simple, functional but not elaborate.” I went into my workshops with this reverberating in my head and couldn’t shake it.

A therapist in Nashville complained that I hadn’t included enough information about alterations in function and that I hadn’t listed for them the functional goals I seek to meet with my therapy. I’ve heard this before and always wonder why they think that I’m supposed to do this. Isn’t this the job of the therapist actually treating an individual patient? I demonstrate how range and tolerance improves rapidly with a variety of people in class. Can’t they translate that rather easily into whatever “function” their patients seek to improve? Ultimately I have to wonder, “What more do they want from me?”

I began to think about the description of the Spartans Pressfield provides. They were above all else economical in dress and manner. They lived in a region of Greece called Lakedaemonia and the English word “laconic” meaning “of few words” is derived from that. They didn’t build phenomenal temples or statuary. They preserved their energy for survival in the predatory environment that marked their time, and though militaristic in the extreme, their neighbors learned that if they left them alone they wouldn’t be bothered. Though always outnumbered, the Spartans feared no one. Their carefully cultivated attitude of indifference prior to a battle everyone knew would be horrific struck their enemies as both odd and chilling.

Let’s start with that. More to come in “Spare is a contronym – Part II.”

[Barrett Dorko]

An older gentleman in my class on Friday listened carefully, stopped me at one point and said, “I get what it is you’re saying you do with your hands, but I think my intellect is getting in the way.”

I know the feeling.

In response I gave him my “Easy and Simple” lecture. When you’re referring to “easy” you’re talking about the task itself, but when you’re talking about “simple” you’re referring to the thought processes behind the task. I say, “Simple Contact is easy to perform manually, but what you have to know isn’t so simple. Instead, it’s complex. Typical manual manipulation of the tissues is the other way around – hard but simple.”

What the Spartans did in battle was easy enough when seen from a distance. Their ranks contained a formation tight enough to allow each man’s shield to cover the man on his left. This phalanx ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phalanx) would then progress forward driven by the men at the rear, each forcing the man ahead with their shield in his back, and on and on. See? Easy. But the discipline and mental toughness necessary to do this sort of thing well; to do it irresistibly, required a legendary training regimen.

And so it is with Simple Contact. It’s easy to touch another and do nothing more, but after that the therapist has to consider the response offered by a nervous system whose complexity is beyond our imagination. If you’re patient; if you’re quiet and, in effect “Spartan” in response, you’ll become as irresistible as the troops on the planes of Greece.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

More soon in Part III of Spare is a contronym.

[Diane]

It might be helpful for people to know what "contronym" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contronym) means.

[Barrett Dorko]

Well yea, sure, but what I was going for here was some intrigue, some mystery.

Not that anything need be a mystery for long anymore, given what the Internet will offer us, as you have revealed. What would be interesting is how many people wondered about the title and never did the 5 seconds of work necessary in order to find out.

This thread runs on several levels, as usual, and one of the messages is this: You don't personally have to be a repository of information anymore - all you have to do is be willing to look for the answers.

[Diane]

OK, sorry I blew your plan. :D Trust me to immediately want to burrow down to the next level ahead of someone else's plan.

You're right about people not needing to be a repository anymore, but I submit there are tracks that must developed or the train of thought won't go anywhere. I just don't trust my train to stay on the rails unless I personally inspect, even build the tracks.

Meanwhile, "contronym" is a really cool word with a cool meaning.

OK, back to the development of your train of thought/thread theme.

[Barrett Dorko]

According to Pressfield (and he knows what he’s talking about) the Spartans revered the ability to use one’s voice. In fact, this skill was second only to the physical qualities of their brand of warriorship.

I’d recommend the Sound is like touch at a distance ( http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4415) thread for some amazing information about this. I especially liked this week’s podcast from Radio Lab ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Lab) about how they can manipulate another’s experience of virtually any speech by altering its nature one way or another.

When we moved to Cuyahoga Falls in ’79 Hudson Hardware around the corner from our home had already been there for many years. It’s tiny, crowded, wildly chaotic and, well, not especially friendly. I felt certain that when a Lowe’s ( http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=home&semsite=google&sembrand=y&semcatg=Homepage_Brand&semsubcatg=Lowes+Brand_No+KWI&semkeyword=lowe's) and a Home Depot ( http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/HomePageView?storeId=10051&catalogId=10053&langId=-1&orig_ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fhl%3DeN%26q%3DHome%2BDepot% 26btnG%3DSearch) were built within a couple of miles from my home that Hudson Hardware’s days were numbered – but it’s still there. As uninviting and as laconic as ever.

Walk in and you’ll see no extras of any sort. No decoration, no bright signs or bins full of impulse buys at the cash register. And certainly no sales pitch – none.

Outnumbered, besieged and surrounded, the Spartans at Hudson Hardware remain.

[Barrett Dorko]

I remember hearing the word “contronym” for the first time at a Poetry Therapy conference 10 years ago. It refers to “a word with multiple meanings, one of which is defined as the reverse of one of its other meanings.” I’ve been looking for them ever since. Among other things, this explains the difficulty I have with ordinary conversation. My mind is just not interested in discussing something it hasn’t already been working on. So shoot me.

Anyway, not long after I wrote an essay titled “Contronym” for a publication no one ever read and today I dug it out. In there I quote an unknown source saying, “Creativity arises from the spontaneous imposition of contradictory realities.” My fascination with creative activity, especially within the movement my patient offers, drew me immediately to the concept of a contronym and I continue to search for them.

Seated in the Atlanta airport for several hours Friday night I thought of my minimalist approach to evaluation and treatment. Now that I've read this book it seems so spartan to me, and that’s something to be proud of, I think. I thought, “Does the word “spare” have its origins in the word “Sparta”?" and, as often happens, my mind begin to grind away at the problem.

Next post: what happened next.

[Barrett Dorko]

We no longer need to look very far for anything, and when I began ruminating about the connection between Spartan and spare I decided to ask here (http://www.wordorigins.org/). I got several answers and gave up on that connection very quickly. But spare as a contronym remained.

The concept of contronym seems expandable to me. It isn’t just the definition of a word; it’s also the situation the word describes. In my essay titled Contronym I ended up describing the muscular activity in the patient as both the problem and the solution, which I still think is true. When spare stuck in my head I started thinking about its definition as “sparse, slim, nothing extra” and connected it to The End of Evaluation (http://www.barrettdorko.com/articles/end_of_evaluation.htm) where I make the case for decreasing evaluative form. But then it came to me that a “spare” implied that there was extra e.g. spare tire, spare change, that sort of thing. Turns out I wasn’t quite right about that.

More about that later, perhaps.

[nari]

I'm thinking of ascetic.
The Spartans were certainly that, along with self-disciplined. Interestingly, the antonym for Spartan means, amongst other meanings, self-indulgent and sybaritic. (qv)

I think the self-disciplined word is important here.

Nari